


Tarnished, broken. Still good steel.

by liripip



Series: Room for three [10]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Multi, Post-Fall of Overwatch, a lot of yelling at each other and then hugging, a moderately happy ending, family means nobody gets left behind, fareeha trying to convince her parental figures she is An Adult, fixit fic, medical nonsense, past relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-16 14:39:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12344670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liripip/pseuds/liripip
Summary: When Fareeha is taken by Talon, Gabriel is forced to pick a side.





	1. Watching

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on a OT3 fixit fic for months and it's finally here *happy tears*
> 
> This bulk of this fic is finished, and while some editing remains, I have no doubt that it will be finished.
> 
> Kudos to [foldingcranes, ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foldingcranes/pseuds/foldingcranes) [Kat2107](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat2107/pseuds/Kat2107) and [crookedfingers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedfingers/pseuds/crookedfingers) for helping me remember that words must happen in a certain order to make sense.

### Jack: Experiments

 

 Jack groans, trying to massage his forehead and missing. The room swims before his eyes.

 “Jack.” Ana says from right next to him. When did she get there? He blearily becomes aware that two of her fingers are pressed up under his jaw, feeling his pulse. The sunlight filtering in is painfully bright. “Jack, do you understand me?”

 “B’k,” he slurs, lurching violently to the side, and because Ana is brilliant or because this is the third time this has happened today she is ready with a bucket once he starts heaving. He struggles to his feet with a groan, checks his rifle, reloads and calls out “Mark.”

 “Five forty three,” Ana says and takes the rifle out of his hands before he drops it. “And I would hardly call you combat ready at the moment, Jack.”

 “Heh,” he says, swaying on his feet. “This is nothing. Back in the program, they’d make us run obstacle courses like this.”

 “Really?” She crosses her arms, unimpressed. “Stand on one leg.”

 He manages, barely.

 “Now jump.”

 He crashes to the ground with a grunt, hitting his knee on the rough stone.

 “I’m writing you in as disabled for that dose and we can stop this madness.”

 “Ana, no. I’m alright. Just give me five minutes and we’ll go on.”

 “No.” He opens his mouth to argue but she speaks over him. “Jack, no. We’re way past the LD50 already and you were barely breathing for a while. This is as far as we go.”

 He rolls over to sit on his ass, rubbing his knee.

 “ _Fine_. But keep the five-whatever so we at least get a data point, that’s how hot I’ve been feeling every time.”

 He stumbles to his feet and goes to deal with the bucket and rinse his mouth, and finds Ana poking about at a diagram when he comes back.

 “Anything?” He puts a dented bowl of rice and beans down in front of her and leans his hip against the desk, digging into his own meal. Ana had called it bland, forgetting the number one rule of super soldier cuisine: Quantity. There are sacks of rice and beans lying around in the abandoned storeroom, and while yes, some spices would have been nice, and some oil, maybe, he hasn’t gone to sleep hungry once since she brought him here. He’s learnt to appreciate that.

 She gestures at the monitor with a helpless air.

 “There’s a _correlation_ , of course, but even if you’re right that this is some sort of SEP-resistance then this is a terrible methodology.”

 “It’s something.” She looks sadly at him. “Ana, it’s more than we had. Eat your beans.”

 “Fine.” She takes a bite and chews it at the side of her mouth, making her look a little bit like a chipmunk. “Fine. What does he weigh, do you think?”

 “Two hundred ten, maybe?”

 “In kilos, Jack.”   

 “Ninety five. Say a hundred, he felt hefty.”

 “Okay, so… This data is shit. Maybe eleven hundred milligrams or so, then, to put him to sleep for a while. I guess. Assuming this certainly lethal dose for a normal person doesn’t just kill him. Again.”  

  


 

 

### Gabriel: They’re watching you

 

“They’re watching you,” she says, leaning back in her chair to worry her teeth at her natural nail. “Look, they have a little cam crawler, isn’t it cute?”

 A window on one of her monitors flashes turquoise to get his attention.  It’s code: He could probably parse it if he were curious enough, but the details of the configuration will mean more to Sombra than it does to him anyway.

 No, he’s more interested in the figure moving into view on one of the video feeds. _Jack_. He’s wearing, of all things, one of Gabriel’s old hoodies, and the only explanation Gabriel can think of is that the sentimental idiot must have actually taken the time to steal it during one of his watchpoint heists.

 On the other hand, Jack meant business when he socked him in the jaw last time they met.

 “Is this live?” he asks instead, sipping his coffee. She nods, hair brushing soft against his knuckles where he’s resting his arms on the back of her chair. She hasn’t bothered styling it yet, still in the sweats she sleeps in at three in the afternoon. “How did you get in?”

 “Hm?” Sombra half-turns, looking up at him with wide, inhumanly bright eyes. She has little AR processors embedded in them, which Gabriel can’t help but find kind of cool. He’d have loved to see what Ana could have done with them back in the day. “Oh, they’re using some of the archaeologist's leftover gear for their perimeter security. Firmware might be older than the mummies.” She giggles, snapping her fingers so the hard light nail flickers back into existence. “Not too bright, are they? Trawling every connected security camera in the world for you, and not securing their own network.”

 Gabriel shakes his head, because they should know better. He’s picked up a thing or two from hanging around Sombra over the years, but he knew enough to be careful even before that. _Athena_ , he thinks. Athena never had clearance for Blackwatch operations, so he never grew to rely on a domesticated God program looking out for him. It has drawbacks, never having to do things with your own two hands.

 “Do you know what they’re planning?”

 “Not exactly, but it’s about you, _claramente_. _Mira_.” She flicks her fingers through the air, bringing up two new images. One is a different angle on Jack, looking over his shoulder onto a workstation littered with images of himself. The other is a still, zoomed in on a few picture frames. _Oh_. He knows those photos. Ana used to carry them in her pocket.

 Gabriel rubs the bridge of his nose, shunting a rush of complicated feelings aside. Later, he promises himself. Introspection can wait. Now _focus_.

 “We already knew that. Anything else?”

 “They’re running some sort of experiment, I think with the little dart-gun? This was a couple hours ago.”

 A document appears on a monitor, text along with a simple, unlabeled chart.

 

 511 mg: Disorientation, coordination problems, blurry vision. 20 s

598 mg: Fell over -- looked funny. 12 seconds to stand, 34 seconds to call

703 mg: Brief loss of consciousness. 1 min 31 s

750: ^, 2 min 18 s

804 mg: ^, 3 min 5s. Vomited when waking up.

 ETA: Subject very grumpy all evening :)

 

Day 2

 

856 mg: Unconscious ~150 s. Vomited. 3 m 57 s

898 mg: Unc. ~3 min, 4 min 48 s, vomited

949 mg: Unc. 4 min 15 s, called @  5:43  but is full of shit. vomited.

 

subject disabled, ending test.  

 

He snorts. Jack is, evidently, still giving it up for science.

 “What about Amari?”

 Sombra leans back and taps something in the air, and a new window opens on the monitor. It’s a view of the desert sky, a few bright stars visible even through the shitty resolution. It pans slowly, the lights of Cairo coming into view on the horizon, and then there’s Ana, sitting with one leg dangling off of some crumpled piece of ancient architecture and a laptop balanced on the other one.

 Her hair damn near glows in the moonlight. Gabriel looks down into his coffee, because he hasn’t really processed how he feels about her return yet.

 Chilled, mostly, because if Jack hadn’t sprung the trap early he could have killed her without ever finding out.

 When he looks up, Sombra’s watching him, a smirk playing on her lips.

 “What.”

 “You were in love with her.”

 He tries his best not to roll his eyes. Denying it would be pointless, she probably has a stack of incriminating photographs squirrelled away somewhere, little gossip that she is.

 “What about it.”

 “So? Her eyes glow, reflecting the light from her nails as she taps her chin. “Aren’t you mad that she let you think she was dead for six years?”

 He sighs. Imagines that Sombra thinks he should see this as some sort of object lesson in what happens when you let yourself need someone. He wants to try to explain to her that this isn’t typical, that one’s longtime romantic partners do not usually fake their own deaths,  but it’s happened to him twice and he doubts she’d believe him.

 And he does not need her speculating on whether Gerard Lacroix might be holed up somewhere, not when Amélie can hear her. She may be numb, but there’s no need to be cruel.

 “Yes, Sombra, I’m mad. What’s she looking at?”

 “Alright, alright,” Sombra says, shrugging without an ounce of repentance . There is a little telescope sitting next to Ana and with a few flicks of her fingers, Sombra has drawn a line along it and and extended it into a narrow cone shooting out into a satellite image of the area. Small purple icons appear on the image, vehicles stuttering forward as the image updates. None of them intersects Ana’s line of vision.

 Sombra tilts her head.

 The security camera pans away from Ana to follow her line of sight, looking toward the bright haze of Giza.  

  Sombra shrugs, stretching. “I can’t pinpoint what she’s looking at, that system’s not connected to the others. I’ll keep an eye on it, see if anything shows up. In return, I think it’s your turn to do me a favor, _no_?”

 He crooks an eyebrow at her. To be honest, he’s long since stopped keeping track of the favor to counter-favor balance between them. They look out for each other. Whatever she’s planning, he’d be watching her back whether she gave him something for it or not.

 He’s not teaching her to cook just so she can go off and get herself killed.

 “What do you need?”

 She clears the monitors with a wave of her hand and brings up a wireframe model that he recognizes as Lumerico’s corporate HQ. It spins slowly, a red dot blinking somewhere in the interior.

 “There’s an off-grid server room in there that I want a look at. I need you to bring my translocator beacon in through the air vents.”

 Should be easy enough.

 “Are we expecting opposition?”

 “Well,” she says, pulling up some additional files, “they don’t know that we’re coming but it’s going to be guarded. I’ve assembled some intel on the routine --” she draws to an uncertain halt, hand hovering vaguely in front of her face. Her eyes go distant before snapping back into focus, both hands punching the holokeys. “ _Shit._ ”

 A window opens up on the main monitor, and then an additional one and - _Fuck_. He knows that view. Gibraltar. Talon’s moving on Gibraltar. Reaper is the perfect operative to lead the assault, and since he hasn’t been contacted… Fuck.

 “Get me a helmet cam.”

 “ _Mierdamierdamierda,_ ” Sombra mutters, but she finds a feed and brings it up next to the satellite image where Talon helicopters are already in position. “I didn’t hear about this. _Chíngame_ , they _kept_ this from me. We need to move.”

 The video feed is from some goon with an assault rifle, one they’re already aiming at a blueish shape growing as it accelerates towards them. _Fareeha_. Bold and glorious and with all the subtlety of Reinhardt with a jet-pack, and this is _exactly_ what Ana was afraid of.

She’s coming right at them.

 He can’t stand here and watch his little girl get shot. He can’t look away.

 “Gabi, we’re busted, we have to go.” Sombra pulls the holocube out of it’s socket and the feed cuts with a burst of static. The arm of her worn teddy bear flops outside her go-bag as she yanks the hidden compartment open and hides the cube. Her eyes meet his for a second and he thinks she’s scared, but then they narrow in cool, calculating anger. She pulls a large, slouchy beanie onto her head to cover the implants, and then she’s jerking her head towards the street. “ _Vámonos._ ”  

 She’s right. Without her help, he’d be flailing in the darkness. He pulls his hood up and follows her.

 Hours pass.

 He doesn’t have time for this.

 The assault on the watchpoint must be long over. Sombra is reluctant to hack Overwatch’s systems themselves, what with the watchful God program, and her capacity is reduced when working only through her implants. She’s further slowed by having half of her attention on creeping silently through the winding tunnels connecting Castillo to Dorado, wondering if there’s a Talon hitsquad lurking around the next corner.

 It’s obvious why she wants a body guard. It’s also clear that, impatient as he is, sticking with her is the only move right now. Get her fingers back in the cookie jar. Plan his next move once he knows what she finds there.

 A muffled noise ahead. His shotguns, mere ghosts until now, flow into solidity in his hands just as he turns the corner to find two kids wearing fluorescent skeleton paint and not much else. They _could_ be Talon agents in disguise, but he’d expect those to be better kitted.

 Sombra snickers behind him.

 “Well now, Raúl,” she says, luminescent purple nails lighting up her smirk in the darkness, “if you didn’t see me, I didn’t see you.”

 Finally, _finally_ , they emerge in a cellar in Dorado. The walls are covered in Los Muertos tags, glowing softly in the evening gloom. There are still people on the streets, but the crowds are thinning. The locals have come home from work and the tourists are still freshening up before going out on the town.

 “How’s my face?” he asks, lighting a cigarette. It doesn’t do much for his nerves anymore, but it’s a convenient cover for the faint smell of rot that follows him around and the occasional waft of smoke that rises from his skin.

 Sombra grabs him by the chin and tilts his face this way and that, smears a little something at his cheek and nods.

 “Keep your head down and stay out of bright light and you’ll be fine.”

 He still pulls the hood of his jacket a little further down over his forehead. The last thing he wants is to be the center of a fucking zombie scare.

 “Stay close,” he says, and leads her out into the street. The safehouse is still some distance away, and judging by Sombra’s current level of paranoia, they won’t be taking the direct route. “Have you found anything?”

 She closes her eyes in concentration and nearly stumbles before he catches her by the elbow, leading her along as her mind probes the data streams. She’s tried to explain to him what it feels like, what she sees.  He has a hard time picturing it.

 “Hm,” she frowns at him. “They have retreated with a hostage.”

 He takes a deep drag of his cigarette.

 “Fareeha.” It’s not a question. At least she’s alive. In a terrible position, but he knows how Talon operates. They’ll start with intimidation, mindgames, then drugs. The really nasty shit doesn’t start until at least the twenty-four hour mark.

 He _really_ doesn’t have time to help Sombra move house right now.  

“You need my help to get to her.”

She’s right, of course. He has no idea where to even begin looking.

“I know.”

“Better get me to my safe house, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment, I beg you. I live for validation.


	2. From there to here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy to have so many of you with me on this journey of 'people who pretend to be dead judge their exes for also pretending to be dead'.

  


### Ana: Call

“Beep beep!”

_What..?_ Ana blinks into the gloom. She doesn’t recognize the sound. At least it’s not the perimeter alarm. 

“Beep beep!” 

Her fingers find her dartgun next to her pillow. She can’t see anything out of the ordinary. The noise is coming from her data pad.

“Beep beep!” 

She picks it up to check and nearly drops it in shock, because where there should be news headlines and notifications from her web crawlers, instead there is a flashing purple skull. 

“Beep beep!”

She jams her thumb into the mute button. It works, thankfully, but the cacophony continues from the main room. She hops off her ledge and looks around the corner, and sure enough, every monitor is flashing the same skull. 

“Beep beep!”

There’s a scuffle of footsteps. Jack, she knows, recognizing the cadence. He peers around the corner and in the middle of it all she has to smile, because he looks ridiculous. He’s barefoot, in a worn t-shirt and boxers, all geared up with visor glowing and rifle primed. 

“Beep beep!”

“Fuck’s going on?” he greets her, scanning the room. “Are we being hacked by the goddamm Los Muertos?”

“Who?”

Ana offers him her blanket, because the desert night is cold and she has enough sense to wear pyjama pants to bed. Jack wraps it around his shoulders. The improvised cloak doesn’t improve his outfit, but at least he’s warm. 

“Beep beep!”

“Mexican street gang,” he says with a frown. “I recognize the symbol. This is way off their turf, though, they rarely leave Dorado.”

“Well,” she says, bracing herself. “Let’s see what they want.”

“Beep be-”

She thought she was ready, mental barriers high and strong, decades of experience in her bones to lend her strength. She was wrong. 

It’s Fareeha. Fareeha, bruised and bleeding from her nose in one still, snarling viciously as she slams her head back into the face of a Talon agent, then Fareeha hanging limp off the shoulder of another agent, both of them being reeled into a helicopter. 

She feels like someone has pulled the bottom out of her heart, like all the life in her is washing out and splattering onto the cold hard rock under her feet. 

“Ana.”

This is her _nightmare_. She sees Gerard with his throat slit on the bedroom floor, only it’s Fareeha, and she sees Amélie Lacroix’s hollow eyes in Fareeha’s face. She sees -

“Ana.” Jack’s hands are on her shoulders. “Ana, look at me,” he says, blocking her view of the monitor with his body. “Breathe. In. Hold. Out. There you go.” 

She wants to wail, wants to be a _mother_ for a moment and not a soldier, but she pulls herself together anyway with a squeeze of Jack's hands. 

“There's a map,” she says. Her voice sounds unnaturally flat. It shows southern Europe, a dot blinking slowly somewhere on the border between Italy and France. 

“There are coordinates as well,” Jack says, keying something in on another console. “It's in the Italian Alps. There's nothing on the maps at that location.” 

“It's probably a trap.” She lets herself stare at the images again. Is this her fault? Does Talon know who she is?

“I know.” 

“We don't even know that she's there.” We don't even know that she's alive, she refuses to vocalize. 

“I know.” He picks up a datapad and plugs it into the main computer. “Make yourself a cup of tea. I'll pack.”  
  
  


### Gabriel: Best laid plans

Nearly 18 hours have passed since Talon struck when Gabriel sets foot in Switzerland for the first time since he woke up. He doesn’t look human enough to get by on a normal airplane ticket, and while he _has_ enough cash to just charter a jet after several years of extremely lucrative mercenary work, setting that kind of thing up out of the blue takes time and attracts a kind of attention that he does not need right now. Not when Talon doesn’t know he’s coming. Not when he still has a shot at getting there in time.

Which is why he’s spent eleven hours curled up against some tourist’s knock-off designer suitcase, huddling for warmth under a few beach towels he looted from someone’s luggage. Apparently commercial airliner holds, while pressurized, do not share cabin air the way the Overwatch jets did, which means they’re fucking _cold_. Not freeze to death-cold, not even for a normal person, he thinks, but cold enough to make a trans-Atlantic journey in them an absolute bitch. 

At least Sombra had gotten a laugh out of it. 

Sombra. He’s in her hands now. He has been before, depended on her mercy entirely for months when he was freshly reborn, but this time he’s going in blind and he doesn’t like it one bit. 

He’s not entirely sure she isn’t setting him up. He has _some_ independent sources of information, but if push came to shove he doesn’t think any of them would last a minute against her. She could be playing him, and he has no way to find out. 

Might as well trust her. He’s going to go through with it, take on Talon, fuck all his long-time plans up beyond recognition. Doubting his only source of intel isn’t going to do him any good. 

_‘If you get caught, I’m not coming for you’._

She’d looked almost ashamed as she said it, backlit in the purple glow from her new holorig. Then she’d snuck her arms around his mid-section and squeezed quickly, stepping back before he had a chance to respond. 

_‘Be careful.’_

It’s progress, he thinks wryly. Even if she is just manipulating him, the idea of Sombra putting herself at risk for another person wouldn’t have even occurred to her a few years ago.

He’s had ample time to review his intel during the trip. He knows where they’ve taken Fareeha, has his favorite kind of simple, flexible plan for what to do once he gets there. 

Once he gets there. The easiest way forward seems to be to steal a car, keep going southeast, up into the mountains. 

The base itself is hidden away on an otherwise empty hillside, only a small concrete structure overrun with brambles visible above ground. Sombra had been able to patch into external security, get a visual that showed the personnel coming out for a smoke. They’ve had to extrapolate from there, because the facility itself seems to be completely off-grid, but seven distinct smokers should mean a total staff of maybe twenty to thirty. 

It's a rough estimate. It's enough. They'd need a platoon to even slow him down. 

A small, vicious smile twists his lips. 

It's been awhile since he's had his fill, because whatever image he projects and whatever bloodcurdling rumors Sombra likes to spread about him, he does tend towards the non-lethal option when there is one. Not so tonight. Tonight he will feast without regrets, because these assholes either doesn't know who he was or think that it doesn't matter. 

Somewhere deep inside him, the ghost of Gabriel Reyes looks out. There is no mercy in his eyes.  
  
  


### Jack: We’ve been around the world

Jack tries not to think about what he's lost. He doesn't miss the responsibilities, the fame, or the glory, but he misses being able to reach out and _help_. More than that, though, he misses the little things. Misses the unlimited supply of fluffy white bread in the cafeteria, complete with little portion packets of butter. Misses Gabriel's odd, huffing snoring into his shoulder on an early morning. Misses Ana’s pride, from before she thought that everything that went wrong in their lives was because she wasn't strong enough. 

Right now, though, he's missing the unrestricted access to aircraft, because continent-hopping without them is a bitch. 

The train ride had been bitterly funny, because the high-speed train connecting North Africa’s major population centers had once been a pet project of Ana's, and she herself had presided over the opening ceremonies when the first stretch was finished. It's effectively the fastest commuter train in the world, and on it sits Ana, with a beat up duffel bag full of guns between her knees, in a train pulled by an engine named Captain Amari. 

It’s funny, in a horrible way. If the situation had been less dire Ana might have enjoyed it too. 

He rummages in his bag for something to eat, finds a bar and breaks off half. 

“Here,” he says, holding it out. Ana looks at it listlessly and goes back to staring out the window. “We’ll be in Tangier in an hour. The best thing you can do is eat and rest.”

Ana looks at him. 

“How could I eat?” Her voice is muted. Hopeless. 

Jack holds back the sigh. He’s finding the situation difficult enough, he can’t imagine what it must be like for Ana. He doubts he would be at his best if the situation was reversed. 

He thinks back to the closest he’s known. Dust clogging up his nose, the sting of burning plastic ravaging his lungs. His hands bleeding as he struggles with the rubble blocking his path. An agent bleeding out not ten feet away, desperately trying to keep pressure on her ruptured throat. 

Jack had shot her without even looking at what uniform she was wearing. Instinct, a split second decision, the death of a woman who’d pointed a gun at him to keep him from Gabriel. He never did find out who she was. 

So no, he understands. You’re not yourself when those you love are in danger. 

He can’t deny that Ana’s descent into self-pitying gloom is wearing on him, though. 

He shrugs, eats his half, and wraps the other one up in the wrapper. Ana’s a grown woman. She’s looked after herself so far. 

They don’t speak again until they reach Tangier, and only because he pretends not to see that most signs also come in French. Ana is different with her feet back on the ground, striding quick and determined to their connecting train, never sparing a glance for the station building around them. 

It’s a shame. The last time they were here, everything had still been covered in tarpaulins. Now it’s beautiful. He’s not really well versed in architecture, but he wants to call it hypermodern meets One Thousand and One Nights, intricate tile patterns chasing each other up the walls. He’d heard the pattern had been designed by the still existent God program, living in seclusion up in the mountains like a hermit of old, as a gift to its human neighbors. It’s supposed to be a mathematical marvel, though he can’t remember what’s special about it. 

Looking at it too closely makes him dizzy. 

The AC is turned up high on their next train, making goosebumps rise on his sweaty skin. Ana asks for the meal bar. Jack takes his own advice and rests his eyes for a while, Gabe’s old hoodie pulled over him like a blanket. When he wakes up, it is to the unearthly landscape of the Murcian crater, picked out in multicolored lights from the omnic reclamation efforts. 

He looks away. It might have been beautiful, if he didn’t know what it was. 

“You should see it at nighttime.” Ana says, her chin propped up on her hands, elbows leaning on the narrow table between them. Her gaze is distant. “They say it’s one of the wonders of the new world.”

Jack stubbornly keeps his gaze inside the train car, sweeping over passengers, bags stuffed under seats or showed in the overhead rack, preferring the view of the half-empty vending machine to the wonders outside the windows. 

The clock reads 15:34. An hour and a half to Barcelona, then. Change trains, get to Montpellier, and after that they are out of both departing trains and cash to board them with. He figures they’ll find a way. Steal a car, probably, head north, following the bright magenta dot blinking on his datapad. It blinks in his mind, too, leading them on a wild chase, what, two thirds of the way around the Mediterranean, all because commercial air uses biometric IDs.

If they make it out of this alive, he’s learning to fly a goddam plane.

  
  


### Gabriel: Guardian

The metal door slams into the wall with a clang as Reaper stalks inside, sweeping the interrogation room with his shotguns. It’s empty except for a chair in the middle, a lone spotlight shining down on it, gleaming on thick black hair just like her mother’s. 

Fareeha raises her head to glare at him, exhausted and defiant. 

She’s alive. The cold, hard knot in the pit of his stomach eases. She’s hurt, she looks so out of it that he’s not sure she knows what is even going on, she’s pissed herself, but she’s alive and he’s found her. 

She’s sitting oddly tilted to the side, as if gravity has decided to pull her at a different angle than it pulls everything else, and for a second he thinks she’s going to tip over, but the chair is bolted to the concrete floor and Fareeha is tied to the chair. 

She coughs and tries to focus her eyes on him, lips thinning to an angry line. There’s blood dried around the edges of her lips, in flaking rivulets down her chin. 

“What’s wrong with your leg?” he asks, stepping over the puddle to crouch at her side. The leg of her flight-suit is cut open, exposing a dark brace fastened around her knee. It’s soaked in blood, though it doesn’t appear to be bleeding dangerously much right now. 

“Captain Fareeha Amari," she grates, tongue stumbling over the sounds. “Helix Security, ID number five-four-seven-three-two-four. Captain Fareeha Amari, Helix Security, ID number five-four-”

Her voice is hoarse from screaming. He hopes it was in rage. 

“Okay, okay,” he says, patting her hand. She’s still sticking to her script, that’s good. “I’m going to cut you loose, try to stay in the chair.” 

She’s bound with zip-ties, which isn’t too bad. Her struggling has broken the skin around her wrists and ankles, but the plastic hasn’t cut deep. He doesn’t think any real damage has been done. 

She pulls her hands into her lap with a pained hiss when he’s done, breaking her litany after one final repeat of her ID number. 

She rubs her wrists, watching him suspiciously through narrowed eyes. Her pupils are widely different sizes. 

Then she lunges, diving for him and toppling him over. He rolls with it, twisting away from the blow to his face, letting his body armor handle the elbow jammed into his gut, blocking her good knee before it impacts his crotch. 

Exhausted and doped up as she is, she’s not bad. She’s fast and determined and vicious, and if the shotgun she’s snatched off the floor wasn’t part of his body, he’d be in actual trouble. 

She jams it into his chest and pulls the trigger, and Gabriel lets the pellets, the gun and himself collapse into dust. 

_“You’ve been practising,”_ he says, his wraithed voice hollow and eerie, and for the first time, Fareeha looks scared. 

“I know who you are,” she hisses. 

He reforms in a corner, manifests a shotgun and decommissions the ceiling camera with extreme prejudice. Most likely no one is watching it, because he’s already killed everyone and Sombra has isolated all outwards communications, but. 

But this is _private_. 

“Do you?” he asks, reaching into his hood to unclip his mask. He takes it off and meets her horrified, widening eyes. “I said I’d come for you. Always.” 

The light goes out.

  
  


### Jack: Dungeons

Jack isn’t sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t this. Some sort of facility. Guards. Instead, it looks for all the world like an abandoned outhouse, all alone on an anonymous, bramble-covered slope somewhere on the French-Italian border. 

“It’s clear. Move up.” 

Behind him, he sees the wavering red light of Ana’s flashlight come closer, and after a few minutes she crouches down next to him. 

“You have no idea how much I miss my eye right now,” she says, snapping her light off. “What do you see?”

“Not much.” He flips through the modes of his visor, seeing nothing special. There is a tiny building with a parabolic antenna on top, the ground temperature is a few degrees higher than it should be, there’s a dark, flat space a little bit away that he thinks may be a helicopter pad. “There’s no one there.”

Ana switches her scope to IR and slips her rifle through the thicket they’re covering behind, getting in position behind it. 

“Go. I’ll cover you.” 

Jack goes, scrabbling down the slope. Even with his visor he has a hard time picking out the tangles in the undergrowth and the loose gravel hidden underneath, and he staggers a few times, but before long he’s closing in on the building. 

He hunkers down in a hollow, peering at the door. There’s something above it that looks like a light panel. Motion activated? Unpleasant: suddenly being under a bright light when his visor’s dialed up this high is about equivalent to getting tazed right in the visual cortex. 

“Ana? I’m going in blind. You in a good angle?”

“Give me a minute.” He hears her muttering darkly over the comlink as she scrambles her way across the slope. “Okay, I’ve got a good visual, go.”

He dials his visor down and pushes forward, sneaking thicket to thicket with his rifle at the ready, tension coiled between his shoulder blades. 

_Click._

The light flickers on, and Jack drops and rolls for his next cover, adrenaline washing through him like an old friend. A few flies buzz around the light. All is still. Okay. 

The last ten yards or so are cleared of brambles and without visual cover. Nothing happens as he crosses them. 

The door isn’t even locked. He nudges it open with his rifle, the light from inside fanning out and -- 

_Oh._

There’s a uniformed Talon agent lying crumpled on the stairs, face down, their neck bent at an angle that makes Jack queasy just looking at it. He flips them over and recoils, hand dropping the unfortunate agent’s shoulder like he’s been burned. 

“Jack!” Ana’s voice, urgent. “What’s happening?”

It’s the first time he’s seen it in person, and it’s every bit as horrifying as reported. The body -- he _thinks_ it’s a man, he _thinks_ he was white, but it - he? - is too dried out to be sure. He looks like a mummy, or one of those preserved bog bodies, and it’s deeply disturbing that he’s still warm to the touch. 

“He’s here,” he says, swallowing thickly. “Reaper’s here.”

He doesn't catch quite what Ana says, but he knows enough Arabic to tell it isn't nice. She takes a deep breath, exhaling viciously into her microphone. 

“I'm coming down.” 

“What? No. Close range is not your strong suit.” 

“Jack Morrison, if you think for one second that I'm going to sit out here while-” 

Jack shakes his head. For thirty years he was Ana's direct superior, and she never once treated his orders as anything but an invitation to debate. He'd be an idiot to expect her to start now.

“You can't see in the dark,” he says instead, lining his rifle up with the power cabinet down the hallway. 

“What are you talking about, there's plenty of -” 

He pulls the trigger, sending three bursts of pulse fire into the cabinet. The lights flicker and go out, his visor adjusting to the new conditions. He can make out a faint sizzle, along with the smell of burning plastic. 

“... light. Jack, are you not satisfied with only one of your exes shooting you in the back this month?” 

“Oops,” he says, insincerity dripping from his voice. “Don’t think he can see in the dark either. If you insist on going in, will you at least stay behind me?”

  
  


### Ana: City of the Dead

This is… Creepy. The facility is dark, lit only by phosphorescent emergency strips. They’re bright enough to follow, barely, but the eerie pale green light from the floor only serves to make the atmosphere more oppressive. Water drips down the wall, pooling here and there on the concrete floor. Jack’s footsteps splash gently as he steps into a puddle, checking the rooms lining the corridor. 

She watches him through her scope, picked out in red and yellow, and that narrow cylinder is like a window to the real world -- a world where the water comes from the sprinkler system in the ceiling, a world of single use milk packets next to the coffee maker and charity calendars with pictures of pandas on the wall -- but as soon as she pulls back from the scope to squint into the darkness the feel she gets is more haunted catacomb than terrorist outpost. 

_Get a grip, Amari_ , she tells herself. You’ve been living in an ancient tomb for eight months. This is nothing. 

Jack slips past a corner, the glow of his visor vanishing from sight. 

“Move up,” he hisses in her comm. She does, gingerly stepping over another body. Cold water laps at her feet. Mostly water. She dearly wishes she had thought to wear boots instead of her customary sandals, focusing on the smell of gunpowder over the reek of blood and death. 

Twenty-two dead so far, this one with a fist-size hole blown straight through their chest. A woman, she thinks, from the cut of her clothes more than what’s left of her body. Young, possibly South-Asian. Wearing Talon uniform trousers with a light-colored tank top, gun still clutched in her withered hand. Her nails are painted bright green, the color glowing faintly in the dark.

Ana sighs and leans down to close the girl’s eyes. They’re terrorists, she thinks, terrorists who _kidnapped_ her _daughter_. What right do they have to be young girls with bright nails? 

The skin on on the girl’s chin is sliced open, five deep puncture wounds on her cheek as from a clawed hand. _Gabriel. What game are you playing? What side are you on?_

She takes position on the corner, nodding to Jack. 

“Go,” she says, senses taut. 

Suddenly, Jack freezes. A few seconds pass. Ana is just about to ask when she hears it too: Footsteps. Slow, steady footsteps, coming their way. She knows that cadence. _Gabriel._

“It’s him,” she says on a breath. 

Jack jerks his head in a nod, brow furrowing deep behind his mask. She crouches down in a doorway, notices a bed, unmade, a pair of boots lying haphazardly at the foot of it. There’s a tiny laminated name-plate on the door. Arnaud. 

She pulls her dart gun from its holster, praying that they’ve got the dose right, that their theory about Gabriel’s resistance is correct. The footsteps are almost upon them. Jack flicks a switch on his visor, which dims until its glow is all but imperceptible, taking position on the other side of the corridor a few rooms ahead of her. 

Reaper steps around the corner and she fires, her eye widening as she registers the smaller figure slung in a fireman’s carry over his shoulders. It’s a good shot, hitting his unprotected upper left arm squarely, and he buckles under his load with a muffled grunt. 

His load, who rolls back behind the corner with a curse and nearly shoots Jack in the head. 

Ana blinks. 

“...Fareeha?”

“ _Mama?!_ ” 

“Hey pumpkin,” Jack says from behind his doorway, carefully sticking an open hand out. “Don’t shoot me.” 

“ _Jack?_ What the _FUCK?_ ” Around the corner, a light comes on with a click. 

Reaper is lying flat on his back, not moving. He was a friend once, more than that, and in any other circumstances it’d be him she’d hurry over to. Instead, she just nods his way, trusting Jack to handle it. 

“Fareeha? Are you hurt?” Her daughter is struggling to her feet, handgun in one hand, a large flashlight in the other. She’s leaning heavily against the wall. 

“Yes,” she says, touching a bleeding scrape on her forehead gingerly, glaring at her bloodied fingertips. “Ow. So I guess that answers the question of whether you and Gabriel made up.”

Ana pulls her into a hug, burying her face in her neck. She might by crying. Her good eye certainly burns as the fear drains out of her. 

“I was so scared,” she whispers into Fareeha’s hair, eventually feeling her arms circle up around Ana’s back. 

“It’s okay,” she says softly, “I’m okay, Mom, don’t cry.” 

Ana collects herself with one final squeeze of Fareeha’s shoulders. God forgive her, her daughter was kidnapped and tortured and she is the one falling apart. 

“Right,” she says, eyeing her critically. “What happened to your leg?” She kneels down, holding the tattered fabric of Fareeha’s flightsuit out of the way. 

“So how are you alive?” Fareeha asks Jack while Ana loosens her brace. Her knee is a mess. A mess that will take actual surgery to fix, most likely, but Ana can still make it better. 

Jack shrugs. 

“Beats me.” He considers for a moment, and she knows him well enough to know he’s smiling sadly underneath the mask. “I’m sorry I never said anything, kiddo. It’s… been a rough few years.”

Ana picks a biotic round out of her belt and ejects the capsule from the cartridge, fitting it instead into the chamber of an empty dart. She squeezes a tiny drop out onto Fareeha’s skin, watching it turn gold as it activates, cleaning the bruised skin before she punctures it. 

Fareeha stiffens slightly. 

“You’re sorry?” She swallows. “We all thought you were dead! What is _wrong_ with you-”

Ana slaps her gently on the thigh. “Ready?” Fareeha nods. “Hold still.” 

A couple meters to their left, Gabriel groans as he comes to. Less time than she’d anticipated. 

“Stay down, Gabe.” Jack is holding his sidearm right up against Reaper’s throat, but his tone is not ungentle. 

“Where the fuck did you come from?” he mutters, slowly, very non-threateningly lifting a hand to rub at the back of his head. His voice sounds _strange_ , with a weird reverberation to it, but without that horrible sneer that she’d heard the last time they met. “I assume this is your doing?” he says in a growl, and Ana is confused until he grumbles something under his breath and adds, “Backup my ass, you think this is funny.” A pause, then he snorts. “Joke’s on you if you think I’m dumb enough to let you benefit from my death.” 

“...Care to share with the class?” Jack asks, one eyebrow climbing above his visor. 

“My asshole associate, who thought it’d be hilarious to have us run into each other like this. Fuck, these darts pack a punch. Can I sit up, or are you gonna shoot me?”

“Haven’t decided, better not test me.” Jack levels his gun between his eyes. 

Gabriel -- it’s impossible to keep thinking of him as Reaper, not when his strange new voice still retains all his old speech patterns -- scoffs. She knows that he’s rolling his eyes behind the mask. 

“You just like me on my back.”

“I like you on my _side_ , Reyes. Are you?” 

“I think that boat has sailed, don’t you?” He lies down, flat on the floor. “Without me, so fuck you, by the way.”

“Gabe…”

“Go to hell, Jack.”

“Been there. Didn’t like it.” Jack tilts his head, but before they can get going on a new thread, Fareeha cuts in. 

“Are you two done?” she asks as Ana puts her knee brace back in place. Ana reaches out an arm to curl around her waist, steadying her. “He’s on my side. Now let’s go.”

Ana looks at Jack. 

“She’s right,” she says, eyeing Gabriel cautiously. “We’ll talk about this later.”

Jack sighs and rises to his feet, sidearm still at the ready. 

“You heard her. Truce?”

“You’re not even gonna offer me a hand up?” 

“Chivalry is dead. You’re not getting up until you agree to the truce.” 

“So shoot me. This isn’t a fucking playground, Jack.” He climbs to his feet, cracking his neck with a series of sharp pops. He looks at Fareeha, his body language softening somewhat. “Are you okay to walk on that?” 

“Yeah.”

“No, you’re not,” Ana says, pulling more of Fareeha’s weight onto herself. “Come here, Gabriel.”

He tilts his mask at her, but he complies, looping Fareeha’s other arm across his shoulders. He’s… not actually much taller, not rising above Fareeha much more than she rises above Ana. 

“So how do we get out of here?” Fareeha asks, and Ana bites her lip. 

“We hiked,” Jack says, taking point before their arm-linked trio. “We, uh. Didn’t want to waste any time.” 

Gabriel turns his mask on him, a clawed hand opening in exasperation. 

“Are you telling me you two just rushed a Talon base without a plan?”

Ana shrugs the shoulder further from Fareeha. “What choice did we have?” Gabriel looks at her. It’s strange, how familiar his presence feels. It’s so easy to fall into old patterns. 

_He’s a murderer_ , she reminds herself. _Yes, her subconscious retorts unbidden. Aren’t you?_

She shakes her head. This is not the time for moral quandaries. “Why? What was your plan?” 

A chill goes through her -- what if Gabriel knew? She wants to believe him, wants to believe that despite all the manipulations and half-truths and outright lies, that the Gabriel she went home to was real. That he cared. That the man who carried five-year-old Fareeha around on his shoulders so she could see into the elephant enclosure and got such a kick out of being mistaken for her father was just as real as the scheming mastermind the later investigations into Blackwatch revealed him to be. 

Gabriel snorts. “I sat in the hold of an airliner for 11 hours, I could plot a little then. This place is a black hole, though. Couldn’t find anything out from the outside.”

“So how’d you get here?” Jack asks, leading the way back to where they entered. 

“I walked. More or less. Couldn’t really call on a Talon helicopter to attack a Talon outpost, could I?”

“So they don’t know you’re here?”

“Well, aside from my associate, whom you’ve had some dealings with. Annoying. Nosy. Currently cussing in my ear. And watching through the security cameras, I might add. I’m the only one who gets to say mean shit about her, don’t even try.” 

Jack quirks a brow. 

“O...kay.” 

“Talon doesn’t know I’m here. And they won’t, because the second Fareeha’s outside I’m torching this place. I rigged it on the way in.”

Ana swallows. Gabriel pulls a detonator from his pocket and twirls it between his fingers. 

He’s right here with them, but she’s seen him disappear before, flowing like smoke through the air. He could probably survive the blast like that. She and Jack certainly couldn’t. 

He could kill them both right now.

She wonders if he’s thinking the same thing. 

Gabriel tosses the detonator in the air, letting it flip over a few times before catching it. He’s looking at her, that strange mask scaring her more than the glimpse she’d gotten of his disfigured face. 

She could lunge for it. The detonator is capped, a tousle wouldn’t set it off. 

She doesn’t. He came here for Fareeha, same as her. She should trust him, if only for a while.

They need him, anyway, neither she nor Jack have much experience covering their tracks. Striking quickly, leaving before their enemies can react, yes, but not hiding that they were ever there at all. 

Gabriel, on the other hand, used to be _very_ good at it. The fire will be suspicious, sure, but nobody will be able to find any proof. Logs will appear showing jet fuel was handled carelessly, or propane tanks stored wrong. An accident will seem plausible, if not entirely probable. 

It’s a good thing, she reminds herself. She doesn’t think that she can ever trust him again, but without Gabriel covering their tracks they’d have all the wrath of Talon coming down upon them. She is good, as is Jack, but she doesn’t know if either of them could have evaded that for long. 

Gabriel knows what he’s doing. She doesn’t know who he is anymore, but she’s never had cause to doubt his ability. 

None of that really helps with her unease that she’d walked straight into a building rigged to turn into a burning inferno at the push of a button, and she’d had no idea. She should have. Protecting her daughter is no excuse: What kind of protection can she offer if she can’t even protect herself? 

They pass out the door and Ana breathes a sigh of relief, the cold, crisp mountain air a balm on her nerves. Gabriel leaves Fareeha leaning on her and drops a last charge right next to the corpse on the stairs. Fareeha rubs her face. 

“I don’t suppose anyone found my suit lying around?”

“Didn’t see it.” Gabriel closes the door, motioning them all back away from it. “I was all around setting the charges, it’s not here.” 

“Great. So how are we getting out of here? Because I hate to say it, but I’m not in shape for hiking right now.”

“The car’s about… three hours over that way,” Jack says, gesturing. “I’ve carried bigger than you.”

Gabriel looks to the sky. 

“I don’t have a better idea. You gonna be okay, baby girl?”

Fareeha gives him a flat stare. 

“I’m thirty-two. I’m a captain. So are you.” 

“Great.” Gabriel tilts his mask. “When I was your age, I’d saved the world. Get back to me when you catch up, yeah?” Jack laughs, trying unconvincingly to hide it by pretending to cough into his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please talk to me, I love it <3


	3. Brave new morning

### Gabriel: Dawnbreak

The less said about their nightly journey, the better. It had apparently been a two hour hike on the way there, driven by fear and with some last traces of daylight easing the way. Now they’re trekking through the dead of night, with Fareeha unable to walk, and Talon swarming like angry wasps in the air above their heads.

They’ve stayed undiscovered so far because their enemy has no idea what to look for, but stopping to hide every time a new drone or helicopter passes nearby is taking a toll on their progress. It’s now well past five, and the sky is beginning to brighten enough that he can see where he’s putting his feet.

Fareeha is asleep. She’s been toughing it out, but she was fraying at the edges from pain and exhaustion, stubbornness only taking her so far. He’d given her some painkillers and she’d gone out like a light, is currently sleeping like the dead on Jack’s back as he carries her piggyback-style. So there went his least awkward companion for the trip.

Ana doesn’t trust him, which hurts more than if she’d just hated him. He’s done bad things, he knows that. Knew while he was doing them that they would haunt him for the rest of his life. Still, the justifications were there. Lives saved versus lives lost. Good intentions. Some stories do not _have_ good endings, just less terrible ones.

He’s spent a lot of time the past few years exacting vengeance for those caught up in some of them.

The thing is, Ana doesn’t seem focused on the bad. She wants to pick apart the good instead, as if she can’t accept that there was ever more to him than darkness.

And then there’s Jack. Jack is… In some ways he’s just the same. After so many years, they fit together like pieces of a puzzle. They’ll start off on a tangent and trade good-natured barbs for minutes at a time, and for a moment Gabriel could believe that nothing’s wrong, that he’s _home_.

And then they’re at each other’s throats again. ‘Not _now!_ ’ Ana hisses every time their voices start to rise and they both choke back the bile, because she has a point. They’ve only seen aircraft, but there’s every reason to believe Talon also has boots on the ground, and sound carries unpredictably in the mountains.

“Incoming,” Sombra says in his ear, sounding bored. “From the south, passing you in five minutes or so.” He can hear her chewing, obnoxiously loud, as they all scramble to find a suitable thicket to hide in, huddling together under Ana’s thermal blanket. Beside him, Jack tears open a bar of some kind, handing a piece to Ana.

_Great._

He’s hungry. As far as he knows, he doesn’t actually _need_ to eat to… survive, for lack of a better word. Subsist. He didn’t for nearly four months after he woke up, unable to control his disintegrated form, and it didn’t seem to matter. Still, as long as he stays in human form, his body expects to be fed. He needs to eat, he needs to breathe, he feels pain just like a real boy.

Jack holds up the bar. His mask is off, eyebrows raised inquiringly, and -- God. He’s still beautiful. Deep scars are carved across his face, his lip healed a little bit uneven around one, but aside from that, age has only improved him.

“I’ve showed you mine, now show me yours,” he says, taking a bite.

“What?”

Jack quirks an eyebrow. He’s sweaty, he has red creases on his face from where the visor has pressed against his skin, he’s talking with his mouth open and full of oat bar, and he’s absolutely breathtaking.

“I’m not giving you any unless you take your mask off.”

Gabriel considers for a second. Realistically, if they’re doing this, he’s going to have to show his face at some point, but. He’s not about to give in to Jack’s playground antics.

There’s a crackle in his ear again.

“Hey Gabi? Did you see the carnitas cart outside my new place?”

Wonderful. Another reason to remove his mask would be to be able to properly pinch the bridge of his nose.

“I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time.”

Patience. He has plenty of patience. God knows he’s had time to practice.

“It’s _divine_. If you don’t get killed today you should check it out. Speaking of, you might want to get a move on - you’re going to be a lot easier to track once the sun comes up. Oh, and tell Amari that I disabled all the anti-theft tracking in her new car. She owes me one. Aaaaaaand, you’re good to go, they’re out of sight.”

Blissfully, the last few miles make for easier trekking, a sparsely wooded area keeping them conveniently out of sight right up to the car, which is covered by a camouflage net. Fareeha swallows another painkiller and scrambles into the backseat, letting Ana examine her leg. Jack shrugs out of his jacket and turns it inside out, and with the mask off and the jacket an anonymous brown, his gear stowed in a duffel bag in the trunk, huh, he could actually fly under the radar as a civilian.

Gabriel rubs his fingers over the leather of his coat. Yeah, not going to blend in the crowd in this one. One glimpse from a Talon drone, one traffic camera, and he’s made.

“Here,” Jack says, chucking a piece of dark fabric at him. Oh. He knows this. One of his old hoodies. “It’s yours. Found it at Grand Mesa.”

Gabriel smiles despite himself, pulling off his coat and gloves and folding them up in the trunk. It’s weird. This whole situation is weird. It’s too easy to drop back into their old dynamic.

“And you kept it?” He zips it up, hides himself in the hood. He’s not quite prepared for it to smell so much like Jack, or how familiar it still feels to be surrounded in his scent.

“I’m sentimental, sue me. You gonna keep that mask on?”

“Yup.”

Jack rubs the back of his neck, uncomfortable. “Okay. Just… Listen, I know we… parted on bad terms, but no one here is going to give you shit about your face.”

Gabriel laughs, mouth curled with bitterness. “Ana told you, did she?”

“Yeah.” Jack closes the trunk and walks up, stopping just out of arm’s reach. “Gabe. I loved you for thirty years. I don’t care what you look like.”

“Good. Then stop asking.” There is a hand on his forearm, just fingertips brushing the fabric of his hoodie. Jack is giving him his Sad Face. “For someone who doesn’t care, you’re being damn persistent.” The Sad Face intensifies.

“Please. Let me see.”

Before Gabriel can make up his mind, there is a scuffle from the car, followed by Ana climbing out. She glares at them both, one arm supported on the car roof. Then she pushes her hood back, fiddles a little behind her head and removes her eyepatch, lifting the hair out of the way.

“There,” she says, remaining eye narrowed at Gabriel. No way she didn’t catch his little flinch, then. “It’s ugly. Go on. Look.”

It’s... pretty bad. Her eye socket is deformed and empty, thick scar tissue twisting downwards and to the right in a sick echo of her tattoo. The cheekbone looks like poorly molded play-dough.

“On the bright side, I can do my eyeliner in half the time. Now stop being so vain. You’re among friends.”

  
  


### Ana: A home away from home

“It’s not the same,” Gabriel says, but she can tell from the sag of his shoulders that he’s folding. “I’m...” he trails off, holding a hand up instead. It dissipates, consumed as if by fire. Black smoke wafts around him in intricate curls before condensing back into pale fingers.

Always so dramatic. Ana isn’t sure what he’s complaining about. From what she’s seen so far, it seems convenient.

Fareeha pokes her head out of the car. She’s moving awkwardly, leg kept extended in front of her by the bandages around her knee.

“Gabriel,” she says, with surprising firmness. “You showed me. It’s okay.”

Ana considers her. Really, now.

“Take off the mask, Gabriel,” she says, turning her attention back on him. “You are more than your face.”

Whatever was holding him back, it crumbles with a sigh. The mask -- it's ballistic, and he could have delayed both her and Jack going gray by years if he’d agreed to wear one all along -- comes off with a snap, and then Gabriel is standing before them.

He looks tired.

The last time she saw him, his face was animated by rage, black smoke pouring out of the fissures in his skin.

Now… His skin is still the wrong color, the left side of his skull looks to have been caved in and never healed, and black smoke still hangs around his face, but most of all, he looks tired. Drained. Defeated.

He looks like he’s been dead for a week but hasn’t had time to lie down yet. She glances to Fareeha, who looks curious but unsurprised. Ana wonders how she went about unmasking him.

“It’s not so bad,” Jack says, smile crooked. _Liar_ , she thinks. He reaches up slowly, questioning, strokes his thumb over Gabriel’s still bearded chin when he doesn’t shy away. “Hell, you always looked your best from behind anyway.”

It’s like Gabriel comes alive before her. His eyes snap into focus, his brows twitching. The left one ripples like liquid, the skin around it cracked like dry clay and seeping thick black smoke. He bares his teeth, glaring at Jack, then at her, then back at Jack, before amusement wins out and he bends his head with a snort, crossing his arms.

His gums are, disturbingly, pitch black.

“Too soon, Morrison,” he says. His face is hidden in the shadows of his hood, but she can hear the grin in his voice. Without the mask, it sounds closer to human, though harsher than it used to be. Ana steps around the car and places a gentle hand on his forearm.

“Let me see?” He doesn’t resist as she slips the hood off his head, letting her get a proper look at him. He looks faded, like driftwood, grey and lifeless and bleached by the sun. His eyes are too pale, almost beige, the iris barely darker than the greyish whites of his eyes. “What’s this?”

There’s a gauze pad taped just in front of his ear, another one poking up out of his collar. She missed them at first, because by some accident of fate Gabriel now appears to have the same not-quite skin tone as surgical tape.

His lips curl in distaste.

“Necrotic skin. My body hasn’t -- no.” He swats Ana’s hand away as she tries to get a closer look. “No. It’s disgusting and it smells bad and I don’t want to dress it again.”

“I have biotics, I can help.”

“You can’t, it’s already dead. Leave it.”

Ana wills her hands back to her chest with a frown.

“It must be painful.”

“Yeah.” He pushes her back with a hand to her shoulder. “We need a plan,” he says, addressing them all. “Does Fareeha need a hospital?”

Fareeha perks up.

“If I can just get in touch with Winston, we --”

“No,” Ana says, quiet but firm. To her surprise, both Jack and Gabriel say it in chorus with her. They share a glance. Jack not so subtly turns his back on Fareeha and pulls her and Gabriel into a huddle.

“Amélie?” he says, voicing what they’re all thinking. “Could they have..?”

“I don’t know, not fully?” Gabriel glances towards the car, and looks uncomfortable when they both look to him. “I’m not involved in that, come on.”

“Hey,” Fareeha calls, unimpressed. “I was talking.”

“You’re not exactly _doing_ anything about it, are you.” Jack frowns, resting a hand on Ana’s shoulder. “They could have upgraded. I say we keep an eye on her, but. It’s your call.”

 _Gerard_ , she thinks, _already cold, the carpet tacky with blood._

“Hey! Stop ignoring me!”

Amélie, face twisted in hatred, lining up the shot that should have killed her. Who would have thought ballet would make such good practice for the battlefield?

“Ana?” Gabriel asks. There are white hairs mixed in with his beard, she realizes. Just a few.

She pulls herself together. She’s not what she was, years ago, but her family depends on her. What you lack in strength you make up in bullheadedness.

“She could be compromised,” she accepts, “But the bone is shattered. Biotics alone won’t grow it back right.” She sighs, the words bitter in her mouth. ”Without surgery, she will lose the leg.”

“ _Shit,_ ” Jack spits at the ground.

All three of them look at each other.

“Hey!” Fareeha calls, struggling out of the car. It’s enough to get Ana moving to stop her. “I’m right here, what are you saying?”

Jack and Gabriel turn as one, shoulder to shoulder.

“We think you might be brainwashed,” Jack says.

“I’m not.”

Gabriel shifts, one hip cocked as he taps his chin in exaggerated contemplation.

“You have to admit that is exactly what a brainwashed person would say.”

Fareeha clenches her hands in frustration.

“I guess,” she concedes. “But,” she continues, raising a finger, “my knee is, in my mother’s esteemed medical opinion, fucked, and I’m not going to sit around here waiting for it to fall off while you see if I turn blue.”

“I get that,” Jack says. “But we can’t just take you to a hospital.”

“So let me call Winston! We can work something out.”

Jack snorts.

“Winston doesn’t have what it takes to keep you contained if it comes to that.”

“What,” Fareeha says, eyebrow raised skeptically. “You think you do?”

Gabriel crosses his arms.

“We are not involving Overwatch, this is enough of a mess already.”

“I am _not_ losing my leg because of your paranoia!”

“Paranoia, huh?” Jack says, sighing. “Hey, is Angela still in Switzerland?” He looks to each of them in turn for answers.

Ana shrugs a shoulder.

“She turned down the recall,” Fareeha volunteers.

“Smart girl,” Gabriel says, pulling a hand out of his hoodie pockets to tap at his ear-piece. “You still there? Ziegler. Find her.”

  


### Jack: Are we there yet?

This might be the most awkward car ride Jack has ever been on. Fareeha has knocked herself out again - not that he blames her, but what the hell is Gabriel carrying around in those damn canisters of his? - and Ana didn’t take long to follow, stretched out with her seat reclined as far as it will go, snoring softly. She’s exhausted, the tension bleeding out all at once. He hasn’t wanted to bring it up, but during their weeks together he’s noticed some changes in her. There’s something fragile about her, like the woman he knew has been shattered into pieces and imperfectly glued together. She used to be rock solid under pressure. She isn’t, not now.

Which leaves him with Gabriel, and a silence that stabs through the heart.

He knows these places. They were _their_ places. Just minutes past they crossed over the narrow bridge Gabriel always joked would be their death.

Jack thinks he would have preferred that, honestly. Commanders Reyes and Morrison, tragically lost in a car accident on the way to their vacation house in the Alps. May they rest in peace.

Gabriel hadn’t said anything this time. Neither had Jack.

The little roadside café that they would always stop at comes into view. Good espresso. Jack has half a mind to pull over, but the old couple running the place could very well recognize him. No need to further complicate things.

They pass, Jack watching Gabriel through the corner of his eyes. His face is as expressive as ever, weirdly greyed out or not. Right now his brow is deeply furrowed, his eyes focused on nothing, gleaming eerily in the shadow of the hood. Jack knows him well enough to tell that he’s in pain, though it’s hard to know if it’s physical or not. He brings a hand up to rub between his eyebrows, and Jack stares in horrified fascination as his fingers slide _through_ the skin, parting it like butter to reveal bloodless flesh and pale bone, before black smoke seeps into the wounds and fill them in.

Jesus.

“Hey,” he tries, clearing his throat. Gabriel glances his way. “Don’t worry, there’s coffee in the cottage.”

Gabriel snorts, expelling a small puff of dense black smoke through his nose. He makes a face at it and pulls out a cigarette from somewhere, lighting up. The next puff through his nose, long and deliberate this time, looks like regular cigarette smoke.

“Huh,” Jack says. “Smart.”

“I hate it. I smell like a fucking ashtray.”

He shouldn’t, Jack thinks. He says it anyway, lips curling at the corners.

“Matches your complexion.” Gabriel stares at him for a second, before shaking his head as if clearing it from a bad dream. Jack inwardly shrugs. At least he didn’t get shot at? “We all know you’re blowing smoke anyway,” he says, smirking as Gabriel rolls his eyes, “so why bother? It smells like a fucking ashtray.”

“Believe me,” Gabriel says, blowing a plume of smoke in his face, “it beats the smell of rotting flesh.”

Ah. He’s probably right about that, Jack concedes. Gabriel is still watching him, posture defensive like he’s expecting an argument. There’s a ham joke in here somewhere, what with smoke as a food preservative and Gabriel's still magnificent ass, but this is not the time for it.

He sighs, hand going unbidden to the chain around his neck, the two sets of tags and the worn titanium ring on it familiar in his grip. He’s still wearing his own ring, the gold pitted and scratched much like the rest of him. He wonders if Gabriel has noticed.

“Who is she?” he asks instead, watching Gabriel’s eyes as they flick his way. “Your associate.”

“You’ve met, actually.” The corner of Gabriel’s mouth quirks joylessly. “She’s the woman who got between us.” He kicks his legs up on the instrument panel, pulling the hood further down his forehead. Jack considers. The only answer he can come up with is Ana, and they both know that isn’t right save in the most literal sense. Which admittedly kind of fits Gabriel’s sense of humor, but it doesn’t work out. They’ve definitely had the aid of an external party during the night.

“I don’t get it,” he admits. Gabriel raises an eyebrow, faint amusement putting some life back into his features.

“Cute. Almost makes me nostalgic.”

Jack refuses to rise to the bait. _Women_? He racks his brains. What women are there that could be considered to have gotten between them? Angela? He knows that something went sour between Gabriel and Angela in the last year before the explosion, but neither one of them would tell him what it was. It was the first time that he was sure Gabriel wasn’t just bending the truth a little but flat-out lying to his face, and it had led to one of their first big fights.

No. Can’t be Angela. He knows because he broke into her office not too long ago, looking for proof that her nanite technology had something to do with Gabriel’s transformation, and while she has files on Reaper the mercenary -- where she speculates about the exact same thing -- she doesn’t seem to have made the connection between Reaper and Reyes yet.

Unless she’s sneaky. Nah. He’s known her since she was seventeen and the girl can’t tell a lie to save her life. Not Angela.

There was a Blackwatch agent who died because all available evac craft had been commandeered by a large Overwatch operation -- Novotná, he remembers, though he can’t recall her first name -- and Gabriel had been _furious_ , stepping on every diplomatic toe in Pakistan in his attempts to recover her body. But Novotná is dead -- not that that’s proving to be a reliable indication lately. Her loss was tragic, in itself and as the catalyst for Blackwatch closing its ranks and eventually rebelling, but it was not the worst thing to happen that year.

“...Amélie Lacroix?”

“Nope.”

“You work with her, though.”

“Yeah. But until about three weeks ago, I thought she’d killed Ana, so we’re not really pals.”

“Is she..?” Jack doesn’t know quite how to put it, but apparently they are still on similar wavelengths.

“Still Amélie? It comes and goes. She’s in there, somewhere. Sometimes she dances.”

“But you don’t trust her.”

“You might not have noticed, but I’m possibly not one hundred percent loyal to her organization.”

“Ah.” Jack scratches his chin. “Okay. I’m stumped. Who is it?”

Gabriel frowns and stubs out his cigarette on the metal of his boot.

“Remember the Blackwatch leaks?” Jack blinks, because of course he _remembers_. He left Gabriel over them. Out of all the things they fought over in the last year of their relationship, nothing came close to the horror he felt when he found out what Gabriel had been up to behind closed doors. “That was her.”

The dots connect. Los Muertos. Dorado. The hacker that leaked the Blackwatch archives was apprehended in Dorado. Gabriel had refused to tell him what became of her, had left no record of her anywhere that Jack could find. He had assumed that meant she was in an unmarked grave somewhere. Guess he was wrong.

Jack clears his throat. Truthfully, he’s a little _hurt_ that Gabriel’s teamed up with the girl who effectively ended their relationship.

Except she didn’t, did she. Gabriel did. She just exposed him. And after, when all the secrets were out, Gabriel was like a different man. Jack wonders which is his true self, if both are.

“How’d you make her work for you?”

Gabriel snorts.

“Other way around. She’s a good kid, more or less. Probably gonna run the world some day.”

Jack frowns.

“She destroyed us. She destroyed everything we worked for.”

“Nah. We did that. Or the fuckers pulling our strings did, and we didn’t catch it in time. What she was doing, what I did, it was just… Overwatch was rotten. It needed to go. Be cauterized.”

“And working for Talon is somehow better? What, two bad deeds cancel out?”

Gabriel snorts, something like his old shit-eating grin curling his lips. It looks like sacrilege.

“It’s alright. I’ve never had to torture anyone for Talon.”

“ _Had to?_ ” Jack snaps, barely holding himself back from grabbing Gabriel’s shoulder and shaking. “Don’t give me that shit.” He bites back the next few choice words that bubbles like bile in the back of his mouth, takes a deep breath through his nose to get himself back under control.

This is an old fight. This is, at its core, _the_ fight, and hearing Gabriel be so flippant about it makes him see red. Deep breath. One, two, three. He drops his hand back to his side with a sigh.

“Nothing’s ever been able to make you do something you didn’t believe in,” he says, voice flat. “You could have found a different way. You didn’t. That’s on you.”

“‘Find a different way’”, Gabriel mocks, in a voice that sounds nothing at all like Jack’s. “There were thousands of lives on the line, dammit, I wasn’t about to gamble with them so I could sleep at night.” There’s a growl to Gabriel’s voice. The dark tendrils rising off his skin thicken.

 _What if you’d been wrong?_ Jack wants to ask him. _At what point are you no better than the evil you’re fighting?_ They’ve been over this. _Torture doesn’t even_ work _, people lie just to make it stop._ They might have had this fight a hundred times, Jack recoiling from the blood stuck under Gabriel’s nails. Stupid. Wasn’t even the same blood, Jack hadn’t found out until months after the fact.

_He was sixteen._

And Gabriel had broken him in time to find the bomb. Saved thousands of people, more. The secondary effects of a large dirty bomb going off in downtown Manila, the unrest that would follow… Their analysts hadn’t been able to agree on a likely outcome beyond ‘bad’. Really bad.

And Gabriel had tortured a sixteen year old boy to stop it.

Jack doesn’t know what to think. His own hands aren’t clean either. He hadn’t stopped to find out, but some of the Los Muertos he faced in Dorado? Sixteen-seventeen at best. Double-tap, center mass. Clean but dead. The boy Gabriel hurt isn’t. He’s in prison. He’s fine. Got the fifteen minutes of fame Gabriel denied him when the Blackwatch leaks went public. He gets _fan mail_ , because that’s apparently a thing that happens when you try to murder thousands of people.

Maybe he’s overreacting. But he’s never done harm to anyone strapped down to a hospital bed, and remembering the footage still makes him sick.

He swallows thickly. They’ve been over this. They’re not going to find common ground. They’ve both lost too much defending their point of view here; at this point, neither one could survive to fold.

Jack doesn’t have the energy to fight about it.

“So no torture,” he sums up, voice rough. “You get dental?”

Gabriel actually laughs, a surprisingly bright, startled thing.

“I think the goons do. I’m freelance. I get paid, that’s it.”

Jack shakes his head. “You’re getting on in years, Gabriel. Gotta look after yourself.”

There’s silence for a while before Jack speaks again.

“So, about the work you’ve been doing for Talon.”

“What about it?”

“What are you up to? Because I’ve seen some neat hits and some assbackwards fuckery that isn’t like you.”

Gabriel gives him a wry smile, eyebrows raised.

“The museum job?”

“Yeah. Were you drunk or what?”

“Talon power play. Needed to stir things up a little, get the attention of another mutual acquaintance.”

“Doomfist?”

“See? You are keeping up. Good boy.”

“Stop being a dick. So what, are you two buds now? I know you broke him out.”

Gabriel shrugs.

“He would have gotten out either way, I was just there for the brownie points. He’s an interesting guy, though. Don’t let the gauntlet distract you, his mind is the real weapon.”

“Buds.” Jack rolls his eyes. “Do you play chess and lift weights together?”

Gabriel snorts.

“Sure. Jealous?”

“Must be fun for you to have someone around you can’t think circles around.” Jack says, dry. He’s not bitter about it, not really. He figured out mere days after they met that Gabriel’s mind operated on a different level to his own.

Gabriel looks away, studying the terrain. Steep mountainsides, clumps of trees, glaciers glittering on far off mountain tops.

“I’d rather have someone I could trust again.” He lights another cigarette. “I have reason to suspect that this whole situation,” he says, nodding to the backseat, “is his doing, but I’m never going to find any proof.”

Jack frowns.

“The attack on Gibraltar?”

“An easily repelled attack that could have been engineered to draw out anyone flying? That was called off as soon as they had Fareeha? That did _not_ include Talon’s favorite sniper to take her down permanently?”

Jack blinks at him.

“Why, though? What did they want her for?”

“I don’t think they do, not really. I’m the real target. Fareeha’s the bait.”

He looks tired, lips quirked in displeasure as he sucks on his cigarette. Jack reaches out to touch his forearm. He doesn’t pull away.

“So what are you going to do?”

“Nothing.” Gabriel shrugs, blowing smoke onto the car roof. “Unless I’ve played my cards wrong, he can’t be sure I had anything to do with it. Really, getting you two involved was brilliant on Sombra’s part.”

“So do you trust her?”

Gabriel makes a face, half grin, half wry scepticism.

“We’ve had a sort of… Balance of terror thing going. Mutually assured destruction. I think the blackmail balance has shifted in her favor after this episode, though.”

“You don’t sound particularly worried.”

Gabriel half-shrugs and thumbs open the car window, the air whistling as they hurtle along the winding mountain road. He tosses the remains of his cigarette out, the whistling increasing in pitch as the window slides back in place.

“She likes me, and she doesn’t like a lot of people. It’s not the first time my fate’s been in her hands.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love reading your comments ;_; You are so lovely.


	4. Hope

### Gabriel: Echoes of a life

He never imagined it could hurt so much to stand in his own kitchen.

It makes sense, of course. Off the grid, self-sustaining, _completely off the books._ Only their closest friends had known about it. He doubts anyone but Ana had known the way here. And so the isolated mountain cottage he’d bought Jack for his fortieth birthday became Soldier 76’s secret hideout, crates of supplies in the corners, boxes of stolen Overwatch materials on top of them, covered in a layer of dust.

The pantry is stuffed with pasta, cheap canned tomato sauce and off-brand vodka. Is this all he eats? Does he actually not understand the first thing about what an enhanced body like theirs -- his, really, Gabriel himself is a bit of special case -- needs? _Fuck’s sake_ , _Jack_ , he thinks. _How are you even still alive?_

He digs deeper and finds some different looking cans, and freezes, fingers brushing a can of serrano peppers. _He bought these._ This fucking can of peppers has been standing on this fucking shelf since before the world crashed down, has been standing here while he died and came back and died again, over and over until he learned how to breathe, how to keep his heart beating. It’s been standing here untouched while Jack drowned his pain in vodka and tomato sauce not three paces away.

He remembers buying it. Touching it is like opening a time capsule.

 _Enough._ He bites through his cheek until he has the welling emotions under control, focusing instead on the thick, slightly grainy liquid that passes for his blood. It tastes like nothing in particular. Graphite, maybe. He spits in the sink, and watches the black fizz and sublimate until there is only clear liquid left.

There. He's calm.

Jack’s made good on his promise, at least. His old ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead’ mug sits at the counter, steam rising of the dark surface.

 _No you won’t_ , he thinks at it, taking a sip. Jack’s coffee is still strong enough to wake the dead. Gabriel almost feels alive again, strong enough to face the pantry of his past.

There. There’s a can of menudo hidden in the back, left untouched despite Jack’s desperate need of protein, probably too spicy for his tastes when there’s no one to watch him conquer it. It’ll do.

He heats it and carries the bowl to where Fareeha is lying in the couch, hair wrapped in a towel, wearing Jack’s old boxers and an overlarge t-shirt. Ana is fussing with her injured leg.

“Is that food?” she asks, pushing herself up and accepting it from him. Her eyes are red and swollen at the edges, but if she kept it together long enough to have her breakdown in the shower, he figures she doesn’t want to talk about it. “You’re the best.”

“He’s a terrorist,” Ana says, matter of fact, and adds with a sideways glare: “A terrorist that should let me look at those lesions on his skin and not pop morphine like it was candy.”

Well why not. She’s not going to stop bothering him about it until he lets her have a go.

“Fine,” he sighs, sitting down on the armrest and shrugging out of Jack’s -- his? -- hoodie.

His biggest spot of localized rot right now is on the back of his upper arm, where he can’t see it properly. It’s big as his palm and painful enough that he thinks he’d lose what’s left of his mind if he went off the painkillers. Ana begins loosening the gauze keeping it covered, swearing under her breath when she gets it into the open air.

“How many of these do you have?”

“A dozen, maybe. They come and go.”

“Uhm _,_ ” Fareeha says, looking queasy. “Can you maybe do that where I’m not eating?”

Gabriel raises an eyebrow.

“I carried you when you were soaked in piss.”

“I was tazed!”

“It was still kinda gross?”

“Get used to it, habībti.” Ana says, dabbing carefully at the wound. “Do you still have sensation in it?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Then it’s not dead.” She finds a dart and squeezes a drop of biotic fluid onto the roiling mass of pus and twisting black smoke. “I guess, I’m no doctor. How did that feel?”

“Now I have _more_ sensation in it.” Gabriel grimaces. “Fuck that stings.” He bites back a shout as Ana squirts the remaining liquid onto his arm, twisting away from her grasp. The biotic fluid is already activating, searing through his flesh as it rebuilds it, evidently starting with his wizened nerve endings. Dark fumes boil from his skin.

“Don’t be a baby, Gabriel.” Ana says, calmly preparing a new dart. “It’s already looking better. Give me your arm.”

She is gentler the second time, working her way inwards along the swollen edges of the lesion. It _hurts_ , hurts like she’s pressing a brand to his skin, but he trusts her with this. She’s patched him up so many times.

He digs his fingers into the couch cushions and grits his teeth, Ana’s fingers stroking comfortingly over his unbroken skin while she waits for the biotics to work their magic. The wound is shrinking, slowly, the bots in the biotic fluid settling at the edges of if and arranging themselves into something like skin.

“I thought we agreed on the no torturing thing?”

Jack, wiping his hands on a rag, every bit the handy home fixer. He’d loved this place, loved fixing it up.

“He’s being dramatic. How are the solar panels?”

Jack hits a switch instead of answering, and the lights turn on. He flicks them off again, because it is a bright sunny morning.

“The batteries are looking good, and the water tank is near full. We’re all set.”

Gabriel looks at him, studies the worn lines of his face.

“You’ve taken good care of this place.”

“Haven’t been back in a long time. But waste not, want not, right?”

“Huh.”

Jack tilts his head and comes around to look critically at his arm.

“Did you get in a fight with a roaming band of brown recluses or something?”

“No, Jack,” Gabriel says, dryly. “I died. I know you were busy at the time, but I thought you’d remember.”

“Gabe…”

“‘ _Gabe_ ,’” he mocks. “Don’t call me that. ‘Gabe’ is dead.”

Jack raises an eyebrow.

“Gabe is obviously sitting right here and being a little bitch.” They glare at each other for a second or two before they both realize that they have an audience. Jack sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Look. _Gabe_. I’m really sorry you got hurt. I mourned you. That doesn’t change the fact that you _led an armed attack on headquarters_. What were you expecting me to do, fucking roll over?”

“I expected you to _have my back._ ”

“ _Against myself?_ ” Jack loses composure for a second, nearly screams it in his face, hands clenched into tight fists. “ _Fuck_ , Gabriel. For years I thought you’d been brainwashed like Lacroix.” He squeezes his eyes shut, and takes a step back to drop into an armchair like a puppet with his strings cut. “But you weren’t, were you. This is who you were all along.” He leans his elbows on his knees and hides his face in his hands.

Gabriel looks to Ana, but her expression gives nothing away.

This is not really how he expected this conversation to go.

“I wasn’t attacking you,” he says, slowly. Surely Jack knows this? “Hell, I’d thought you’d be at my side the second you saw me with a gun in my hand. You used to trust me.”

Jack shakes his head, face still in his hands.

“You didn’t use to lie to me. Or I don’t know, maybe you used to lie better.”

The bitterness in his voice is palpable, his voice breaking just so at the end of the sentence. Ana makes a small sound of distress and drifts over to him, settling on the armrest with her hand on his back.

Fucking Jack, getting all the sympathy. As always. Gabriel’s never been able to determine if he does it on purpose or not.

Fareeha is looking at him, instead, bowl of soup still in her lap.

“Gabriel,” she says, clear and calm. “Tell me what happened.”

He sighs and closes his eyes. Telling her is easier, somehow. She seems determined to give him a chance.

“His people had some of my people in custody. They’d been breaking into an embassy, standard stuff for them, except his fucking bloodhounds interrupted the op and there was a huge diplomatic stink about it.”

“His people were supposed to be confined to base at the time.” Jack growls. His hands are off his eyes, which are predictably red at the edges.

“Jackie-boy over there was about to hand them over to buy Overwatch’s reputation back.”

“Public perception of us was at an all time low, I had to do something. They broke the law.”

“On _my_ orders. They were _my_ agents, they were loyal to _me_ , and you were not answering my fucking messages. What was I supposed to do, huh?” 

“Not storm the fucking base!”

“I had a responsibility to them! You wouldn’t answer your fucking phone! You redacted my access codes!”

“ _You tortured a child, Gabriel._ ” Jack’s voice is all restrained fury, Ana looking quickly between them, hand on Jack’s arm.

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Gabriel groans and presses his knuckles to his temples. Black smoke fizzes around his ears. “You make it sound like he was twelve. Jesse was the same age when he had his first R2I training, it was pretty much the same thing.”

“I found out through the news!” Tears in Jack’s eyes, again, spilling angrily down his cheeks. “Seeing you… That creepy Belgian I could have handled, but _you_?”

Gabriel blinks, momentarily stunned.

“I’m sorry… you would have prefered it if it was Benoit?”

“Or any of the psychos on your team? Of course I fucking would! I knew you had a dozen agents ‘not afraid to get their hands dirty,’ but I didn’t think you were one of them!”

Gabriel’s face twists in disgust. He stands up, balls his fist, muscles tense.

“I was not about to let fucking _Benoit_ go at a tied up teenager, what the fuck.” He stares at Jack. “You think I took the easy way out? Is that it?” Too angry for words, he spits in Jack’s lap.

He storms out of the room, out of the house, finds himself out on the sunlit patio with nothing to accompany him but a beat-up plastic chair. He kicks it, kicks it again, before he pulls it around the corner out of view of the door, sits down and stares at nothing.

  
  
  
  


### Jack: A rare chance

Jack buries his face in his hands, biting back a scream of frustration. Ana pats his arm, moving off the armrest to rummage among her things before she comes back and dabs at Gabriel’s spit on his shirt with a tissue. It’s black, but the black seems to be bleeding away, boiling like a fizzy tablet and turning clear. What the hell.

“Tell me I’m right,” he says, fingers digging into his scalp.

“About which part?”

“Any of them.”

Ana sighs and sits down on the armrest again, carding through his hair.

“Did you really have no idea?”

“About the torture? _No!_ You _did?”_

“Not anything specific, no.” She twists on the armrest, pulling her legs up in his lap. “I knew something was weighing on him. He asked me one night if it was worth it. How many lives a soul was worth, I think he said.”

“That’s awfully poetic.”

He'd checked the dates on those tapes, and he remembers that night. Himself drunk on relief and victory, having led the team that found and disarmed a dirty bomb in central Manila during Overwatch's last days of glory. How he, the hero of the day, had come home late, bone-tired but feeling on top of the world to find Gabriel asleep with his head in Ana's lap, one of her hands resting on his shorn hair while the other scrolled through reports.

He thinks that maybe, if Gabriel had just _told_ him, that maybe it would have been different. He can’t imagine himself ever condoning something like that, never, but he remembers the look on Gabriel’s face that night, drained, blank, and he feels like an idiot.

 _‘I don’t know what you did, but you saved a lot of lives,_ ’ he’d told him, and Gabriel had reached out _,_ pulled him close and just held him, held him like he was something precious.

Jack hadn’t thought anything in particular about it at the time. He’d been in the blast zone, it had been a close call, why _wouldn’t_ Gabriel hold him?

 _Stupid_ , he tells himself, a hand spanning his forehead to press at his temples. _What did you_ think _he’d done?_

Truth to be told, he hadn’t really thought about it at all.

Less than a year later, it had all been gone.

“You used his intel, didn’t you?” Fareeha asks from the couch. Jack had just about forgotten she was there.

“We did.” Ana says, taking his hand between hers and lacing their fingers together. He's not sure which one of them she's trying to comfort.

“And you didn’t ask how he got it?” Fareeha tilts her head in question. “I’m not saying he was justified, but, seriously? I wasn’t even _in_ Overwatch and I knew he was bending the rules.”

Jack sighs, leaning against Ana. He raises his eyebrows.

“You had, ah, unique insight into the organization.”

“I thought I did. What happened? Because I visited you guys for Eid and everything was fine, and two months later mom goes MIA, _apparently of her own free will_ , and three months after that you and Gabriel _kill each other_?”

Ana plays with the end of her braid.

“It was a difficult year.”

“ _No shit._ ” Fareeha pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’d storm out of here like an angry teenager, but I can’t walk. Go away, I need to think.”

“Alright.” Ana sighs, getting to her feet. “Jack, you should clear the air with Gabriel, before he gets it in his head to disappear again. I’ll… have some tea while we wait for Angela.”

Jack sighs as well. Another person from his past he would have preferred remembering him the way he was. His hand finds the chain around his neck. It’s a conversation he wishes they could have on better terms, but he has a feeling they won’t have any more conversations at all unless he brings out the heavy artillery.

Thankfully, Gabriel is not hard to find. He’s sitting on an old chair around the corner of the house, feet on a boulder, looking down into the valley below. If he squints, Jack can imagine a different life, one where none of the last six years happened and them taking weekend trips here was commonplace.

“This is yours,” he says, placing Gabriel’s ring on the armrest with a click. “Figured you should have it.”

Gabriel turns it in his fingers, checking the inscription. He’s not looking at Jack.

“And I thought your first proposal was bad.”

Jack grits his teeth, bites back the retort. Sometimes Gabriel is entirely too good at getting under his skin.

“I’m not proposing, you asshole.” He nudges Gabriel’s feet off the rock and sits down in front of him. “Can’t propose twice with the same ring.” Gabriel tries it on his pinky, spinning it around. “I want us to talk to each other again, is all. Is that so strange?”

“Where did you get this?” His voice sounds hollow, that strange echo in it more pronounced.

“I found your body.” Jack closes his eyes, focusing on the feel of the sunlight, the soft breeze. He doesn’t need to be pulled into those memories right now. “I’m sorry. I tried to get to you in time.”

“Can’t have been very hard.” Gabriel finally looks at him, his face inscrutable. “Holding cell 7-B. Or did your goons not tell you where they put me?”

Jack shakes his head, looking at his hands. So many scars.

“I didn’t ask. It didn’t seem important at the time.” Gabriel raises an eyebrow. “HQ was a warzone, your agents fighting mine. Fuck, I thought you were safe, Gabe. I didn’t expect the explosion. I ran for you as soon as it happened.” He looks at his feet. “Finding you was the worst moment of my life.”

Gabriel fiddles with his ring.

“How did I die?”

“You don’t remember?”

He shrugs.

“I don’t even remember the blast. One minute I’m locked up in my own base, the next I’m in a ditch somewhere, finally learning how to pull myself together well enough to think. Somehow five months had passed and I’d drifted to Germany.” He pokes the tip of his index finger through the ring, biting his lip. “Like a jellyfish.” He looks at Jack, face a little softer. Jack wants to reach out for him, doesn’t. Not yet. “What caused the explosion, anyway?”

Jack shrugs a shoulder.

“A fire in the lab. It got to a hydrogen line and then the fuel depot while everyone was too busy shooting at each other to put it out.” He takes a deep breath, and reaches for Gabriel’s hand, just barely touching their fingertips together. He clears his throat. “I found your autopsy records. They said you died from the blow to the head,” he says, eyes roaming over the strange, cracked blackness over Gabriel’s eyebrow, “but if you hadn’t, blood loss or smoke inhalation probably would have gotten you anyway. It was… I knew you were gone. I still checked, but I knew.”

He feels the first tear spill hot down his cheek as his resolve snaps, as he drops to his knees in the dirt between Gabriel’s feet. “Fuck,” he sobs, and strong hands grab him by the shoulders and pull him closer, in between Gabriel’s knees to press his face into his stomach. “I loved you. I loved you so goddam much.”

Gabriel hushes him, hands smoothing down his hair, big and warm and comforting until Jack winds his arms around his waist and hugs him, and Gabriel goes tense, breath hissing between his teeth.

“Sorry.” Jack mumbles, pulling his hands back to hover uncertainly over Gabriel’s thighs. “Dead spot?”

“‘S okay. Just… Grab onto the hoodie if you need to squeeze, ‘kay?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” He nuzzles in closer. “I’m sorry,” he says again. He’s not entirely sure if it’s for touching his wounds just now or something else. Bigger.

“Mmh. It’s okay.” Gabriel cups his neck and squeezes, gently, hand staying on his skin as Jack unwinds.

Finally, he leans back against the boulder, his shin resting against Gabriel’s calf.

“Okay,” he sighs. “Do you want to talk about it using our indoor voices?”

Gabriel cracks a small smile and squints at the sun.

“We can try.” He chews on his lip for a moment. “I don’t know where to start.”

“If I say something I did wrong, will you get all smug and self-righteous?”

“Probably?” Gabriel looks at his hands. “No. I won’t. Shoot.”

"I shouldn’t have cut communications. I was,” he swallows, forces his voice to stay neutral. “ _disturbed_ by certain files in the Blackwatch archives. But I lost track of what was personal and what was professional, and I apologize.”

Gabriel sighs.

“Yeah, you did,” he says, leaning back. “I wish I could be mad about it, but I wasn’t any better, was I?” He frowns, wrinkling his nose. “The line between giving your CO plausible deniability and lying to your lover is really fucking tricky to walk, you know. Maybe all those anti-fraternization rules had a point, after all.”

Jack waits until Gabriel looks up and meets his eyes.

“If I’d been made to choose,” he says, “I’d have picked you.”

Gabriel’s head tilts, his face scrunching up in faint confusion.

“You were. You didn't.”

“Gabe, that's not fair. I had hundreds of people relying on me. I had a duty, responsibilities. I couldn't drop everything because you suddenly lost your goddamn mind.”

Gabriel stares at him. There is pain in his face. He’s trying to mask it as anger, but Jack knows him too well.

“I remember a time when you would have had my back no matter what. When did that stop? Because I clearly didn’t realize until it was too late.”

“It stopped when I couldn’t trust you anymore,” Jack says on a sigh. He has had ample practice keeping calm and civil even when his instincts wants him to lash out and defend himself. “I knew you were lying to me. I knew you were going behind my back, disobeying direct orders,” he pauses, letting all his frustrated helplessness show, “fuck, abducting politicians? Murdering people? Those two Thai diplomats that drove into the Seine, that was your doing, wasn’t it?”

Gabriel kind of shrugs, like he doesn’t understand why a double homicide would be such a big deal to his partner. Jack supposes that kind of thing is routine to him now.

Jack counts the next few items out on his fingers, voice rising gradually as he speaks.

“You almost started a civil war in Armenia, the Chinese _and_ Namibian governments were calling for your head, you _raided_ UN headquarters?”Jack stops to stare at him, remembering his growing fear and confusion during those fateful months. “I thought you’d gone mad, Gabe. I’d already relieved you of command, confined you to quarters, sent an officer to try and get Blackwatch under control, and then you show up in my base with your weapons drawn. Tell me, Gabriel, please: What did you _think_ would happen? Why did you think I'd take your side?”

Gabriel looks, if anything, lost.

“Because I would have taken yours? If push came to shove. If someone tried to lock _you_ up. That’s what you do when you love someone.”

Jack resists the urge to grind his teeth. Gabriel is very smart. He’s a strategic and tactical mastermind, he can read motivations as well as situations and get inside anyone’s head to press their buttons. But for some reason, this all gets shoved aside sometimes by his childish, naive idea of loyalty. In Gabriel’s mind, you stand by your own, no matter what. In Jack’s, you stand by what you believe in.

And whatever had gotten into Gabriel during those last few months, Jack sure as hell hadn’t believed in it.

“Gabe,” he says, allowing himself a sigh. “Your guys, your elite blackops guys, were threatening my science and med teams, to try and force the release of people who had plain as day broken the law. You sure didn’t look like the underdogs.”

Gabriel, for lack of a better word, sulks. When he speaks again, it's with his bottom lip sticking out like a grumpy child's.

“I thought you’d realize I wouldn't do that without having a good reason.”

“Well did you?”

“ _Of course I fucking did.”_ Gabriel pauses himself, seething, black smoke boiling off his skin. When he continues, it’s in an angry hiss, the volume of his voice restrained but not the venom. “Did it never occur to you, during six fucking years, that perhaps I didn’t turn around to destroy _everything we built_ for nothing?”

Jack takes a deep breath, reigning in his temper.

“So what was it?”

“What?”

“This great reason of yours? The one that unleashed this personal crusade? Because I thought that maybe it was my fault for not listening, or pushing you too hard, or not putting my foot down when you were out of line, or fuck, that this was all some horrible misunderstanding. But there was obviously _something_ going on, and you _still haven't told me what_!”

Gabriel shifts, giving a little non-committal shrug. Jack feels his grip on himself fraying.

“ _What happened?!_ You were in charge of our intelligence arm. If something was going on, you were supposed to _tell me_!” He takes a deep breath, forces his voice back to something approaching calm. “But you didn't. Fuck,” he says, bowing his head, pressing his fingertips into his eyelids. “Do you have any idea how many nights I lay awake wondering what they bought you for? Not money, not you.” He looks up. “Power?”

Gabriel drops back in his chair with a groan, one hand scratching deep, smoking furrows in his face.

“I swear to God, Morrison, the things you’re willing to believe about me are fucking appalling.” Jack squints at him. He looks horrifying for a second, his cheek torn open, shredded and exposing his teeth. “Nobody bought me!” He rubs his forehead for a second, thankfully not breaking skin this time. “I didn't tell you because I didn't _have_ anything, not anything definite. And,” he bites his lip, nose scrunching up in reluctance, “you were already really angry with me, and explaining…” he motions with a hand, circles in the air, “ _that_ would mean telling you some other things that you were probably happier not knowing.” His voice trails off at the end, his hands fidgeting uncertainly. “I was trying to make things right.”

Jack sighs. He's too tired. He doesn't even want to know.

“Gabriel, what did you do?” he asks anyway.

“Things I regret.” He looks up, meets Jack's eyes. “Not torture. That was the only time, I swear. But I had bad intel, and I got people who deserved better killed. And when I found out, and who benefited from it, well… I guess I kinda did lose it.” He swallows. “Listen, I still can't prove most of this. So,” he shrugs, trying to look casual. Jack doesn’t buy it. “Are you gonna listen and give me a chance, or should I just fuck right out of here and go back to Talon?”

This is it, then. The moment of truth. Jack blinks at him, looking deep into his eyes.

The corner of his mouth curls up of its own accord, because he knows that look. Gabriel is nervous, scared not of danger but because he doesn’t know quite how Jack will react, and Jack's reaction means the world to him.

Jack hasn’t seen it on his face since he was twenty-six. Jack was on his knees in the dirt out behind his family’s farm in Indiana, ring in his hand and question on his lips, and Gabriel was trying to think of a way to turn him down without hurting his feelings.

And that settles it. It’s Gabriel. Jack _wants_ to believe him. Can't imagine sitting here, talking, only to go back to a world where they are enemies.

“Okay. I’ll listen,” Jack says, taking his hand. His left, naked without the plain titanium band Jack finally got him to accept that day. A symbol of an extended, secret, engagement, one Gabriel wanted to be very clear was unlikely to ever turn into a marriage for a slew of legal and practical reasons. Jack strokes his thumb over his ring finger, where so many years of wearing it has left a faint, still perceptible indentation. Gabriel looks between his eyes and their fingers, something raw and vulnerable in his face. “I’ll listen. Just... No more lies. Whatever it is. Just tell me.”

Gabriel holds his gaze for a second before he sags in something like relief. He squeezes Jack’s fingers, too many expressions flickering across his face for Jack to make sense of them all.

“Okay,” he says, “so after the leaks, I started an investigation into the person behind them. Sombra. And I found her, caught her, or so I thought. But as it turned out, getting alone in an unmonitored room with me had been her plan all along.”

And so Gabriel spins a tale of conspiracy and corruption so extraordinary that Jack can only sit there blinking in amazement. It’s wild, it’s shocking, and in any other situation Jack would have leaned back on his professional scepticism and demanded evidence, documentation, anything to back these claims up, no matter or maybe even _because_ how instinctively satisfying some of the conclusions are.

He’s not the Strike-Commander anymore, though. He doesn’t have to justify his choices any longer.

“Do you believe me?” Gabriel asks, and Jack can hear his heart in his throat.

“I do.” He reaches up to cup Gabriel’s face, pulling him off the chair with the lightest of pressure, gathering him up against his chest as he drops to his knees. “I believe you. Jesus Christ, Gabriel.”

Gabriel’s voice breaks when he speaks.

“Thank fucking God.” He presses closer, putting all his weight on Jack, fingers digging into his shoulders. He’s shivering. Jack strokes his back, carefully navigating between the places that makes him flinch, one hand a steadying presence on the back of Gabriel’s head, holding him in with his face pressed into the crook of Jack’s neck. He doesn’t say anything about the wetness, about the strange tickling sensation that he guesses is Gabriel’s tears fizzing away into nothingness, just holds him close until he pulls back on his own.

Jack wipes the tear-trails off his cheeks with his thumbs.

“I love you,” he says, unwilling to let go of Gabriel’s face. “Do you know that? Through everything that happened, I never stopped loving you.”

“Good.” Gabriel wraps his hand in his own, lacing their fingers together. “I love you too. Not sure if I forgive you, but I love you.”

His lips are too soft when they press against Jack’s, like they have no real substance. When Jack tries to press in, kiss him like he used to, they split under his teeth, leaving a strange texture behind on his tongue.

### Ana: Absence makes the heart grow harder

“I would like us to talk,” she tells Fareeha, leaning on the kitchen doorpost. “Before Angela gets here.”

“About what.” Fareeha crosses her arms. Her face is closed off: It’s not a question, not really.

“Do you want a cup of tea?”

“Save the pleasantries, mother. What is it?”

Ana walks over, sets herself down in the chair opposite to the sofa.

“I assume you got my letters?”

“Yes.” Fareeha is looking straight at her, unflinching.

“You never answered.”

Fareeha rolls her eyes.

“Where would I have sent them to, exactly?”

“I would have found them. I was closer than you think.”

“Okay,” Fareeha says, pouring a glass of water from the pitcher on the coffee table. “That’s slightly creepy.”

“You are my daughter, I was looking out for you.”

“You let me think you were dead for five years.”

Fareeha fixes her with a glare that could melt steel, and Ana sighs.

“Fareeha, I’m sorry, but-”

“No.” Fareeha sets her glass down with enough force that it sloshes out over her hand and onto the tabletop. Her eyes don’t leave Ana’s for a moment. “‘Sorry’ is not good enough. I need to understand.”

“I _didn’t mean to_. I was _so tired_. I’d failed. People I cared for where dead because of it. I thought, if I only stayed hidden for another week, it’d come back to me, my courage, my drive.... I wasn’t ready to go back.” She lets her eye fall shut and feels the fight go out of her. “But the longer I waited, the harder it got. I was ashamed. I kept telling myself that I’d rest for just one more day.” She looks up, meeting Fareeha’s eyes. “Then HQ was destroyed. Gabriel was dead, Jack was missing, and whatever had happened I couldn’t imagine it would have had I only been there.”

Fareeha reaches out. There’s more than a meter between her extended hand and Ana, but she takes the invite for what it is and moves to sit at her daughter’s side.

“I know you’re disappointed in me, habībti. A lot of me died that day. It was better I was a ghost.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I pray you never do.”

Fareeha leans her cheek on her shoulder, her arm curling around Ana’s midsection. Ana leans her head on top of hers.

“I’m glad you’re alive.” Fareeha says into her hair. Ana covers her hand with her own.

“So am I. That’s something, isn’t it?”

“It’s something.” Fareeha squeezes her. Ana thinks she’s just about to say something more when her comm chimes. A tiny hologram of Angela’s head and upper body spins above the device, her body language tense.

Ana taps up the voice converter she uses for her bounty-hunting sideline and covers the camera.

“Shrike speaking,” she says.

Angela swallows.

“I received your message,” she says. “Before I give you anything, I want proof that Fareeha is unharmed.”

Ana blinks and turns to Fareeha, who is looking equally confused. She looks at Angela’s hologram again. The poor girl looks frightened. Frightened but determined.

Ana sighs. Sombra. This must be more of the sense of humor Gabriel had warned her about.

“First show me that you’re alone.”

Angela’s hands move, and the hologram zooms out, expanding, showing Angela in full figure standing in a park. There are no landmarks Ana can pick out, but there are several shapes in wheelchairs fuzzily rendered in the background. Hospital grounds, she guesses.

Fareeha reaches for the comm and turns off the voice distortion.

“I’m here, Angela.”

Angela’s eyes narrow. She can’t see them. Voice replicators are getting good.

“What’s your agent verification code?”

“Hang on.” Fareeha flips the comm upside down, muting the mic. “Mother. It’s time.”

Ana feels the damaged muscles in her cheek twinge as she instinctively tries to squeeze her eyes shut.

“I can’t do this,” she says, hunching in on herself.

“Yes you can.” Fareeha says, pushing her chin back up with her thumb. “You’ve been a ghost for long enough. I’ve got your back. Come on.”

Ana takes a deep breath and flips the comm back over. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Angela’s mouth fall open in shock.

“Angela, this is Ana Amari. Fareeha’s knee is shattered and we need your help.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not that many people are reading this story but the ones who are are bright and shining stars and I love reading your thoughts and speculations <3


	5. Our lives, written in scars

### Gabriel: ‘Interesting’ is a terrible word coming from a doctor

It’s a little bit after nine the next morning and Gabriel has just finished Sombra-proofing the house when a car pulls up.

“Okay,” he says, dropping the batteries he pulled from every connected device he could find onto the kitchen counter and beginning to form a shotgun in his hand. It’s probably Angela, but he didn’t live this long by taking chances. “She’s a sneaky fucker so nobody plug anything back in or she’ll find a way to spy on us through the toaster. Always cover the cameras on any comms device. Expect her to turn the hot water off if you shower, I couldn’t disconnect that one.”

“I can show you later,” Jack grumbles from up on the sleeping loft where he was supposedly asleep. “Was that a car just now?”

“Do I have to tranq you to get you to rest, old man?” Ana calls, hands on her hips.

“Car?” Jack calls back, sitting up, pulse rifle in his arms.

“It’s Angela,” Gabriel says, spying through the kitchen window. “She’s alone. Did we, uh, tell her about…?”

Before anyone answers him, the door is pushed decisively open.

“Fareeha,” Angela says with warmth. “I’m glad to see you looking so well. Winston called me.” She pauses. Gabriel can’t see her, she’s still in the narrow entryway and he’s in the kitchen, looking out at the main room, but he can hear her voice cooling. “Ana. I presume Jack is around here somewhere as well?”

“Up here,” Jack says gently, sitting at the foot of the bed. He’s pulled on a t-shirt at least, his legs wrapped in the bedcovers. His hair is sticking up every which way, but the pulse rifle is nowhere to be seen. “I’m sorry, Angie.”

He hears her take a sharp, deep breath, before continuing.

“Oh, don’t be, I’d already lost my family once. It was easier the second time.”

Ouch. A precision blow, that, delivered with admirable calm. Gabriel is impressed. Time to break it up before Jack is completely demolished.

“Hey,” he says, stepping out into the doorway, waggling his fingers. Angela’s narrowed eyes widen, shock written plain across her face. Her eyes flick across his body, where he’s still wearing a lot of his pretty distinctive armor. Realization begins to dawn.

He lets his fingers dissolve into smoke.

“ _No_ ,” Angela says, but it’s not hurt or condemnation in her voice, more dumbfounded wonder. “How-- You-- It really works. You were dead.” She puts her bag down and strides over to him, heels clicking on the wooden floor. “I have no doubt about it, I assisted at the autopsy.” She eyes him critically as if expecting to find an impostor. Gabriel raises an eyebrow at her. The broken one. Angela’s hands twitches as if to reach to inspect it.

She reels in her curiosity enough not to.

“Gabriel,” she says, suddenly formal. They were never close, not like she and Jack were. Him convincing her to stand-by as he tortured a teenager certainly didn’t help their relationship. “I have theorized about this possibility, though I never expected to see it on a familiar face. May I take some tissue samples later?”

He crosses his arms and leans back on the doorjamb.

“I’ll trade ‘em to you, Doc.”

“Yes? What can I do for you?”

“Explain. Fix it, if you can.”

Angela bites her lower lip.

“I’ll see what I can do.” Her eyes are sympathetic. That professional kind of sympathetic that doctors use when they give you bad news. Shit. “Don’t expect too much, Gabriel.” She turns away, picks up her bag and heads over to the couch, taking a seat on the edge next to Fareeha’s legs. “Now. Gunshot to the knee, was it? Let me look.”

He watches her busy herself for a minute, Fareeha answering some questions, Ana others, until Jack starts climbing down the loft ladder. He’s wearing a pair of sweatpants that may well be older than Fareeha, and Gabriel can’t help the little surge of nostalgic affection they bring up in him.

“Cup of coffee?” Jack asks, shouldering past him, and Gabriel shrugs lightly and follows him into the kitchen. “So, uh.” He turns on the gas, places his old-timey whistling kettle on the stove before turning around. “I’ve been curious. How do you do the whole turning into smoke thing?”

Gabriel leans back against the counter, standing close to Jack with their shoulders just barely touching. Trying to describe it in terms familiar to someone who has never woken up as a shapeless, buzzing mass is hard.

“Counter question: How do you breathe?” Jack immediately screws his face up, his nostrils flaring as he tries to get a sense of it. Gabriel can’t help the smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth. “How do you walk, how do you keep your heart beating, how do you swallow?”

Jack gives up his breathing exercises and looks at him.

“Okay, so, you learn as a baby, and your brainstem just knows, I guess?”

Gabriel shrugs.

“Lucky you. Wraithing feels kind of like that. Automatic. Like blinking when something gets too close to your eyes.” He thinks for a second, watching the steam beginning to rise from the spout of the kettle. “When I was... new?” He squints. It’s not quite the right word. “Remade? My body was pulling itself together, like it knew what shape it was supposed to be. I kept waking up like that, half-formed, and realized I didn’t know.”

He sees the moment that Jack makes the connection, his eyes softening in helpless sympathy. Gabriel looks away. He doesn’t want his pity, but somehow all the emotions rushing through Jack tug on him. It helps, somehow.

The sharp whistle of the kettle cuts through the moment, and Jack hurries to turn off the gas. He considers Gabriel for a second, before reaching a hand out, closing about his shoulder.

“What happened?”

“I died. Again and again, I wasn’t counting.”

“Gabriel…”

“And just as I was losing consciousness, I’d feel myself coming apart. And then it started again.”

Jack just looks at him for a second, and wraps him in his arms.

They spend most of the day outside, because Ziegler won’t stand for having all of them around as she works and Ana isn’t letting Fareeha out of her sight. So instead they talk, about them, about geopolitics, about Sombra’s fucking carnitas cart and his outfit and Jack’s lack of one.

They kiss, a little, then get in three separate arguments that nearly result in them screaming at each other. All of them end with Jack putting his hands up in a universal gesture of ‘stop’ and taking a deep breath, held and then exhaled in a long controlled rush of air.

“Indoor voices,” he says.

“Indoor voices,” Gabriel agrees.

Still, they’re… making progress, the spectre of both their deaths and six years of grief hanging over them heavy enough to make them try. Gabriel wants this, he does. Wants Jack back, as a constant presence that can read him as well as he reads him back.

He _wants_ to forgive him, it’s just… hard. All the surfaces they used to touch at are twisted and withered, pain springing up from the most unanticipated places.

It’s dusk when Angela finally invites them into the main room again. Fareeha is propped up on cushions, her knee encased in a sleek plastic brace with tubes of biotic fluid coming out of it, a small whirring pump circulating it around. A compact bioprinter chugs away on the table, slowly synthesizing the parts of her new knee.

Angela rolls her shoulders and sets her empty dinner bowl on the table.

“So,” she says, “It’s been a long day and I’ll save the experiments for tomorrow, but I’ll tell you what I can guess about Gabriel’s condition. Something like this has been theorized, but what I can’t figure out is what triggered it.” She looks at him, searching his eyes. “Do you know?”

He shakes his head.

“I barely have any memories from the first half year. I can’t really think when I’m not solid.”

“Unsurprising. Your mind is shaped by your brain and vice versa -- when you ‘wraith’, as you say, there is some connectivity, the nanites can complete simple tasks, but without a brain there can be no proper consciousness.” She scoots further into the couch, pulling her legs up underneath her and reaching for her tea. “When was this?”

“Uh, let's see. The first date I remember was March 11th. I was awake before that, but it's all very jumbled.”

Angela cocks her head.

“In 2070?”

“Yeah, why?’

“Just trying to work it out. Your grave was disturbed in October of ‘72. I thought perhaps that triggered this --”, she gestures to him, “process.”

“He wasn’t in it.” Jack supplies.

“No,” Angela says, sparing him a glance, “I figured.”

“No, I mean --”

Gabriel cuts him off with a laugh.

“Best fucking thing to ever happen to my credibility. There I was, trying to find an angle to get the Talon council’s attention with, and _this_ falls into my lap. Their old enemy turned traitor, _risen from the dead_ and back for vengeance.” He grins, sheepish, looking between them. “It’s better that anything I could make up.”

Ana snorts.

“I’m glad you find the desecration of your grave so amusing.”

“Guys.” Jack says, raising a hand.

“I mean it’s creepy as hell, but it’s a pretty cool backstory. Really helped me build Reaper’s character.”

“ _Guys_.” Jack looks between them. “I have an important announcement but first: Gabriel Reyes, you utter _nerd_.” He looks at Gabriel and shakes his head, the corner of his mouth twitching before he turns serious, looking him straight in the eyes. “Secondly, I was the one who dug up your grave.”

They all look at him for a beat. Several beats. Jack scratches his cheek, hard enough to leave red marks on his skin. He’s beginning to look uncomfortable.

Gabriel stares at him.

“You what now?” Gabriel doesn’t know how to react to this. “Why? And how did this not come up yesterday?”

“I had to know.” Jack grimaces. “And I didn’t know how to bring it up. Didn’t think it was that important, you were never in it.”

“What?”

Ana leans forward, pinning Jack on her glare.

“I cannot _believe_ you never told me.”

“Hold on,” Angela says, holding up her hands for stop. “What do you mean he was never in it? Not at all?”

“No. The casket was perfectly clean.” Jack shrugs a little. “I needed to be sure,” he says, waiting until Gabriel looks back, Jack’s eyes locking onto him with enough intensity that he feels like he’d had the breath knocked out of him. “I’d seen footage. I _know_ you. Put on whatever stupid super-villain outfit you want.” Jack looks away, the connection broken. “I didn’t understand how it could be you. I thought maybe someone had cloned you or something?” Jack rubs his neck with a sigh. “Hell, that’d be less weird than this.”

The silence is awkward, until Fareeha steps in to save them from themselves.

“Wow,” she says, shaking her head. “You guys are something else.”

“I gotta admit, I did not have you pegged for the grave robbing type.” Gabriel says, still working through the implications. It’s better than submerging himself in how fucking _weird_ this all is. “Okay. So… I guess my body was stolen before that, then. Uh. Angela, were you at the funeral?”

“Yes,” she answers, folding her hands in her lap. “But the casket was closed -- the head wound wasn’t pretty. The best I can do is find out who took custody of your body after the autopsy.”

“Yeah, okay.” Gabriel says, scratching his beard. “I must be in it, right? I mean, this is my real body? Not some, I dunno, nanite memory?”

Angela twists her lips in thought.

“I expect so, yes. Biotics replicate soft tissue, not bones. I would be very surprised if the ones you have now were not your original set.”

“That’s a relief. Alright, my original theory still stands. Hey, Jack?”

“Mmm?”

“Ten bucks says whoever took it and fucked it up has ties to the SEP.”

Jack scoffs. Gabriel sees the corner of his mouth quirk up just a little bit.

“I’m not taking that bet, Gabe,” he says, unable to resist the banter. It’s cute, not that Gabriel is faring much better. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Could have fooled me,” Ana says, as dry as ever. “Now, if there are no other earth shattering revelations..?” She looks between them. “Angela. Please continue.”

“Right,” Angela says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “You know how biotic fluid has two main components, yes?”

“Mimics,” he answers, “and what do you call them, the ones that make cells.”

“Assemblers,” Ana supplies. “They build new tissue while the mimics keep the body alive.”

“Yes. We use different terminology in the field, but no matter. For some reason, I believe related to your previous enhancements, something triggered the mimics remaining in your body to start replicating, and eventually restoring organ function, some time after your passing. However, since cellular decay had set in, the new cells the assemblers produce are already dying. I believe those patches on your skin are aggregations of those.”

Gabriel looks around the table. They’re all looking at him, but it’s open, frank. Nobody shies away as he meets their eyes.

“So I’m what? A colony of nanobots carrying around a few pieces of rotting flesh to trick genetic scanners?”

Jack snorts.

“Oh, you're you alright.”

“In a sense, but you could say something as unappealing about any one of us. Cells die all the time; when they don’t, you get cancer. The unique thing about you is that all of them are dying at once, with the mimic bots stepping in to fill in the gaps.”

Ana shifts forward and leans her elbows on her knees.

“Can anything be done? The wound on his arm seemed to get better with biotic treatment.”

Gabriel sighs, fingertips pressing into the fresh skin that had grown in under Ana’s hands. It’s swollen and tender. He’s all too familiar with the sensation.

“It’s already rotting again, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so. I believe, and this is just speculation at this point, that your current body is mostly mimics, which is why your ‘healthy’ skin is so fragile. They’re reproducing just enough cellular matter to keep a template of the person they’re mimicking, and storing it where it does the least damage, painful as I’m sure that is. You would not survive a lesion like that in your brain, for example. However,” she says, leaning forward and tapping at her left eyebrow. “I should be able to remedy this situation. As Fareeha’s injury so well illustrates, biotic fluid is not well suited to replacing bone, but other materials are. Seeing as you seem to take your weapons apart with ease, I don’t imagine a titanium forehead will cause you trouble.”

“We’ll finally butt heads on equal terms,” Jack supplies. Ana swats at his arm.

  
  


### Jack: Absence makes the heart grow fonder

The cabin isn’t built for five. The bed itself is big: At one point of their lives, all three of them would come up here every chance they got, taking every opportunity to get away from it all and be together, pretend for a day or two that they were normal people with time to love each other.

Those days days are gone, but like this, with Gabe’s snores mixing with that snorting mumbling thing Ana has going on when she dreams, the rain tapping against the roof shingles? If he just closes his eyes he can almost imagine that he’s back in better days.

He’s not, though. He isn’t sleeping well, can’t remember the last time he got more than a couple hours without drinking himself into oblivion first. Ana knows, more or less. He gets by. He doesn't need that much sleep, anyway.

He's certainly not sleeping tonight, not before Ana or Gabriel wakes up. Not with a potential Talon agent in their midst.

He snorts to himself, scratching the stubble on his chin.

They already have a confirmed Talon agent in their midst, an elite mercenary known to suck the very souls from his victims. He’s currently curled up on his side with his back to Ana’s, drooling a dark, fizzy little puddle onto his pillow. Jack shakes his head, smiling. He loves him. He doesn’t know how not to.

Maybe he's being a fool. He’ll be one, if that’s what it takes. Because ever since Gabriel stepped back into his life, it's like a part of him that he thought was dead has woken up.

Gabriel Reyes isn’t gone. Maybe Jack Morrison isn't either.

Fareeha shifts on the couch, leg elevated on a pillow. She's leafing through an old paper book, looking bored. He wonders how long she'll let them keep her here - they can't let her go, not knowing what happened to Amelie, but he doesn't know if any of them has it in them to try and hold her against her will. Angela, if anyone. She was as involved in Amelie's case as any of them.

Fareeha tilts her head back, looking him straight in the face. Stone-faced. Blank. He watches her impassively until she raises an eyebrow.

"You can sleep if you want to, you know," she says, looking back to her book. "I'll have to climb that ladder once I decide to come murder you. You'll hear me.”

The immediate danger to her leg is over: it will never support her weight again without a knee replacement, but delaying the surgery won't do her any harm. Good, since Angela is still insisting on performing it in a hospital, and Jack can't think of a single way to make that safe.

Even if Fareeha's mind is her own, and he desperately hopes it is, she still has a target painted on her back. Fareeha or Gabriel, one of them is in the crosshairs now, will _stay_ in the crosshairs until Doomfist is satisfied.

“You could get to Angela,” he muses, glancing to the door. She’d said she'd sleep in her car, and a short while later they'd heard her driving off. There'd been a few minutes of stress and yelling while they argued about what to do now before Gabe had gotten ahold of Sombra and confirmed that Angela had parked a few kilometers away and that her messages all seemed innocuous.

Sloppy of him, though. He's too used to trusting them. Trusting Gabe despite it all is a choice, a choice to bet on hope. Trusting Fareeha and Angela is habit, a bad one that puts them all at risk.

Fareeha glares at him.

“I'm not going to kill Angela, Jack, come on. I'm not going to kill any of you. You have my mom up there.” She snaps her book closed. “What can I do to make you trust me? How do I prove that I'm _not_ brainwashed?”

Jack sighs and closes his eyes for a second. It's alright, she can barely stand up on her own, let alone get to them before he has time to react.

“I agree that it's tricky. Suggestions are welcome.”

“Overwatch,” she says, staring straight at him. “Let me call Winston. They can put me in quarantine, I don't care, work something out with him that you're satisfied with.”

Jack scrunches his nose.

“You kids are gonna get in trouble that way, you know that, right?”

“We’re not kids. You were younger than I am when Overwatch was founded.”

“Overwatch was _legal_ then.”

Fareeha laughs at him.

“Really? Every single one of you is wanted internationally and that's how you want to play this?” She tilts her head, expression dead serious. “You lost your right to say anything when you let us think you were dead. Mom too. Gabriel I kind of get: He was dead, and he might have been killed again by an angry mob had he come forward. But you? Shit, Jack, you could have done something if you'd taken responsibility instead of running.”

He rubs at the ache between his eyebrows. She's not wrong, is she? He wonders what would have happened if he'd stayed. Could he have prevented the Petras Act and saved Overwatch? Would Ana have come back, given enough time? Would Gabriel, once he had his new body under control, have come home if Jack had defended his memory instead of running?

Would Gabe even be here, half alive, or would whatever that ripped him from his rest never have happened?

He doesn't know.

“I'm sorry, Fareeha,” he says, hears the gravel in his voice. “I couldn't. I'm sorry. Will you believe me if I tell you I'm trying to do the right thing now?”

“Jack,” she says, and he can hear her eyes rolling. She picked that up from Gabriel, her intonation just the same. “The right thing to do is to come clean. You could clear our name!” She pauses, her mouth twisting sadly as he shakes his head no. “At least tell me. You broke into all those bases. What were you looking for?”

“It doesn’t matter. Nothing special.”

“Bull. Shit.” Another phrase she borrowed from Gabriel. McCree did the same. He briefly recalls all three of them talking. It was adorable. Always made him wonder what his and Gabriel's children would have been like.

Stubborn, probably.

“You won't tell me?” she says, steel in her voice. “Fine. But I'm not going to stay here forever. I'll let Angela work, then I'm going back to Gibraltar. Are you going to try to stop me?”

Jack sighs.

“I dunno. We'll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

Fareeha shoots him a look and turns away, turning off the lights with a snap of her fingers.

Jack watches her from his perch, keeping his gaze on her silhouette until his eyes have acclimated to the darkness. The sky is dark tonight, they are far away from any larger villages and the clouds lie thick between them and the moon. Still, the small points of light that pass unremarked in the daylight gives him enough light to see by. His rifle, still glowing softly even in night mode, resting in his lap. The perimeter alarm pulsing with a faint green LED fading in and out in intensity. The comm central blinking sporadically, most of it unplugged by Gabe's insistence on home privacy. Gabe's pissed-off looking kneepads, glaring at him from the end of the bed like some creature from the underworld.

Their owner mutters something in his sleep, turning around and pulling the covers tighter around his shoulders. He always did get cold easily, internal thermostat never quite recovering from a round of injections way back when, the one that laid the entire program out with the fever shakes.

Jack had held him through it, Gabe soaked through with sweat and shivering violently in his arms, clutching at him in delirium as Jack kept anxious eyes on the temperature reading on his wrist.

They weren't lovers then, not yet. Things changed after that.

The rain lets up. Gabriel's soft snores mix with Ana's wheezing, Fareeha making some noises of her own down in the couch.

Jack watches.

  
  
  


### Ana: when everybody heals but you

Jack and Gabriel jump apart as she enters the kitchen the next morning. She can't see why: If they have found a way to look past their difficulties, she is nothing but happy for them. They both deserve better than they got.

She gives them space, watches them through the window as they stand close together on the patio. Jack is pretending he cares about the cigarettes. She sees him forgetting about one, letting it burn down to a column of ash before he notices and drops it to his feet.

The next day she glimpses them kissing. It looks soft, gentle. Sad.

She’s not sure why it makes her tear up.

She makes herself look away, focuses on the dishes she’s washing. She has no right to feel left out -- they loved each other long before she ever met them. Loved her, maybe, too: They both said so, long ago, but she doesn’t think they meant the same thing.

She didn’t, either. She loves Jack, but not in that way. It’s hard to explain -- given their history, platonic clearly doesn’t fit. But she spent weeks cooped up with him in the necropolis and never wanted anything sexual. They were never like that. He’s an attractive man, he’s her best friend, but somehow Gabriel was always the spark.

Gabriel, whom she did love, in the conventional romantic way. She doesn’t know if she can now. The gray and rotting skin she thinks she could get past. The things he’s done… She used to think he was gone, that the Reaper was just some soulless spirit stalking the earth in her old lover’s guise. But no. Whatever else he’s lost, he’s still Gabriel. And he has still done things that she has a hard time stomaching.

There’s no use getting hung up on it. It’s a dilemma for the future, if at all. If they want her, they know where to find her. Perhaps she’ll have sorted her feelings by then. For now, she has more important things to focus on than the ruins of her love life.

Fareeha is better. Angela had, after a lot of grumbling, managed to set up a passable surgical station in the kitchen. It’s what she does: Advanced medicine in sub-optimal conditions. A knee replacement is simple enough by her standards, having been a standard procedure for decades. Ana had assisted during the surgery, but really she just think Angela wanted her to feel useful. Between biotics and the collapsible robotic arms in Angela’s personal surgical kit, she hadn’t been much use.

Outside, she hears Jack laughing.

She’s happy for him.

Behind her, Fareeha awkwardly navigates around the living room on her crutches, accompanied by the peals of Angela’s laughter. They seem to be getting along well -- by Ana’s reckoning, they can’t have met many times during the old days, Fareeha long since living with her father by the time Angela joined Overwatch full time. The rare few times she let Fareeha come along on base, and then, she thinks, her own funeral. Angela was there, she’s sure of it. They must both have been for Jack’s and Gabriel’s as well, though she couldn’t bring herself to watch it.

How much contact does Angela have with the reborn Overwatch, anyway? More than she likes to admit, Ana thinks.

She sighs, looking out the window. Jack and Gabriel are gone. The dishes are clean. Her thermos of tea is already full. She has nothing to do with her hands.

The afternoon passes, with Ana trying to keep busy. Jack and Gabriel return, pretending that nothing is going on, but she catches them looking at each other time and time again, like besotted teenagers. It’s sweet, really. She wishes the best for them.

She keeps watch that night. It’s difficult, keeping her guard up against the daughter she wants nothing more than to fold into her arms. But she is a soldier. ‘Difficult’ is her way of life.

Fareeha doesn’t bother to argue with her, just tells her a polite, distanced ‘good night’ and goes to sleep.

She was always the fun weekend parent during Fareeha’s teenage years -- as much as she tried to stay involved she knows that all the difficult battles were fought by Fareeha’s father. ‘Good night’ may be the cruelest thing her daughter has ever said to her.

She carries on, though, because if she was going to lay down and die she would have done so long ago. The next day is a little easier. She eats breakfast with Jack and Gabriel, who is wearing his engagement ring again. She covers his hand with his and squeezes, smiling. She’s not sure it’s appropriate to congratulate them, but Jack seems to get it anyway.

“Heh,” he says, squeezing Gabriel’s other hand. “Third time’s the charm, right?”

Gabriel glances at him under raised brows. Somewhere, Angela found time to synthesize a latticed plate to firm up his frontal bone as well. Ana assisted during that surgery as well, gloved fingers holding Gabriel’s wriggling skin apart while Angela slotted it into place. She could _see_ the fragments of bone latch on, finally begin to heal right after years in flux.

It was less than twenty-four hours ago. She can’t see a trace of it.

Gabriel points at Jack with his fork, chewing his breakfast spaghetti.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he says,“you’re still on a probationary boyfriend basis.” He takes a sip of his coffee, tangling his fingers with Jack’s.

That night, it’s Gabriel’s turn to keep watch. Ana can’t sleep. Thermos stuck in her coat pocket, she climbs onto the roof. With the valley gaping black below her, a million stars shining above, she feels as insignificant as she ever did in the desert.

She’s been important for too long, to just be a mote of dust in the universe is a relief. She falls asleep up there. It is far from the worst place she has slept.

The next day, she catches Gabriel alone when he’s out smoking. He’s hiding behind the corner of the house, where Angela can’t see him.

“Can I have one?” she asks. Gabriel scrutinizes her.

“Only if you really plan on smoking it,” he says, eyes narrowed. “I’m running low.”

“I promise.” She accepts one and lets him light it up for her. She has barely smoked since the crisis. It burns in her lungs, makes her cough, but it’s good. There’s a peace to be found while staring at the ember of a cigarette. She’ll take it over the peace Jack finds in a bottle.

“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry,” she says, forcing herself to meet his eyes. Her weakness has hurt him enough already. She will give him her courage now.

Gabriel doesn’t meet her gaze. His gaze flickers, from her to his lit cigarette, to his hands to the mountain tops.

“For letting us think you were dead,” he says. There’s no inflection in his voice. “Why are you saying this to me? Jack was right there.” His eyes meets hers, finally. She can’t read the thoughts behind them. “Fareeha lost her mother.”

She won’t flinch. She’s strong. She’s been through worse than apologizing to the man whose ruin she may have inadvertently caused.

“I’ve spoken to them,” she says. It’s true, though she hasn’t really apologized to Jack. He did do the same thing, after all. She folds, finally, gaze dropping to the worn out print on Gabriel’s t-shirt for a second. He’s still wearing the hoodie Jack gave him in the car, she’s barely seen him without it since. No. Head up. Strong. “I’d rather do it one on one.”

Gabriel shrugs.

“Okay,” he says, taking a deep drag and exhaling it toward the endless sky. “I’m listening.”

“I failed,” she says. “It destroyed me. I hesitated, and four of our people died because of it. When I -” she bites her lips, hard enough to hurt, takes an angry drag on her cigarette. She coughs again. Gabriel watches her impassively. “When I woke up, do you know what I felt?”

She stares into his eyes. It’s a challenge, one he refuses to meet. He shakes his head.

“Shame,” she says. “I was ashamed. I shouldn’t be alive, not with them dead. I couldn’t face their families. I thought perhaps,” she says, sighing, “that it would be better for everyone if I was dead too.”

Gabriel stubs out his cigarette and leans back against the wall, crossing his arms. He watches her for a second, as if expecting more.

Ana bows her head.

“Then I read about my funeral. They said it was beautiful.” She tries to smile. Her face is not cooperating very well. “I read an interview with Fareeha. She said there was closure.”

“Ana…”

“I couldn’t very well come back after that,” she sobs, “could I?” There are tears running down her good cheek, hot and wet. Her face hurts, cramping, too many expressions trying to paint themselves at once. She brings the cigarette up for a last calming drag, her hands shaking. Gentle fingers pluck it out of her fingers, and then she’s pulled in against Gabriel’s chest, his big warm hand stroking over her back.

“Jesus Christ, the both of you,” he says. “I’m not going to forgive you just because I hate it when you cry.”

She tries to pull back. He doesn’t let go.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, hands balled against his chest. She takes a deep breath and brings her emotions under control. “I’m not even halfway through, let go.”

She misses his embrace the second he lets go.

_Strong_ , she reminds herself.

“I know it was wrong of me. I thought about going back, once a little more time had passed. I knew you needed me, I saw the media descend on you like vultures. I was going to come back. Help sort things out.” She stops for a second, grounding herself. “But I waited too long. I didn’t see what a fool I’d been until the explosion.”

Gabriel looks at her, then out over the valley. Without looking, he pulls out another cigarette and lights it. He smokes slowly, eyes tracing the path of a bird high in the sky. It’s some sort of raptor, she thinks. A large one.

“I don’t need to tell you that things might have gone very differently if you’d come back.”

“No.”

“I needed you.”

“I know.” She breathes through her nose even though it stings, tries to keep herself under some sort of control.

“So did Jack.”

“I know.”

“He thought that I blamed him. For leaving you. I didn't.” He looks down, pain on his face but his eyes dry. She hasn't seen him cry, not even when Angela peeled open his skin. She wonders if his tears would be black as well. “I know how you get. Wasn't a thing he could have done to stop you. Hell,” he says, hand shaking when he brings his cigarette up to his mouth. “I've spent half my life trying to prepare for the day I have to leave one of you behind.”

“I'm sorry,” she says, reaching for his hand, flinching when he jerks away from her touch. “Gabriel, please. I know I hurt you.” She takes a shuddering breath and a step back, trying to give him space. “Please just talk to me.”

Gabriel shakes his head.

“What do you want me to say? That it's okay? It's not. You let me think you were dead.”

She lowers her head, defeated.

“I was in a bad place. I know it's no excuse, but I really did think you were better off without me. It was...” She pauses for breath, forging ahead. “It was like you after the crisis. Except I was alone, and a failure.”

Gabriel’s jaw tenses. He rubs at the crease between his eyebrows, hard enough that smoke pours around his fingers.

Steeling herself, she pushes on. He wants to forgive her, she thinks, he wants to forgive both of them or he wouldn’t still be here. And yes, she did wrong, but she’s not going to lie down like a complete doormat. Gabriel certainly hasn’t lived a perfect life either.

“Tell me, Gabriel,” she says, some of the steel slipping back into her voice, “if that had been you, would you be here today?”

He shoots her a tired, _resigned_ look.

“You’re never going to believe I wasn’t trying to kill myself, are you?”

_Strong._ She will ask his forgiveness, but she will not beg. Her good eye narrows, her cheek twitching as the missing one tries to follow along.

“No. But what really matters is what you believe, Gabriel.”

He sighs, dropping back against the wall, looking at the sky again. The bird is out of sight.

“Fuck,” he says. “We’re some fucked up shit.”

Ana nods. He’s not wrong. She watches her cigarette burn down to the filter and go out between her fingers. Neither of them speak.

“You want me to say that it’s okay, and I won’t,” Gabriel says after a while. “But I’m glad you’re alive. Really glad.”

Ana watches him go. She stays outside for a long time, watching the sun set over the mountains.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are drawing to a close and I don't want this to end :c 
> 
> As always, comments delights and sustains me


	6. What peace is left for us

### Gabriel: Life, all around you

“I’m going with Angela,” Fareeha tells them, standing tall next to the kitchen table. Jack puts down his bowl of pasta. Ana isn’t with them, has been avoiding him since their conversation yesterday. Gabriel wonders why Fareeha is talking about this with him and Jack instead of with her. “This quarantine of yours is ridiculous. There’s no way to prove what isn’t there.”

Gabriel turns to Angela, who’s standing in the doorway, looking uncomfortable.

“Didn’t you find scopolamine in her blood the other day?”

Angela tucks her hair behind her ear.

“In trace amounts, yes.”

“Well? That’s supposed to be a mind control drug, isn’t it?”

“In spy thrillers, yes.” She brings up her data pad and taps it a few times. Jack looks up attentively. “In these concentrations, I’d say it’s more likely to come from a motion sickness pill.”

“Yeah.” Fareeha crosses her arms, bumping her hip into the table. “The mark VI isn’t quite as smooth a ride as it looks. We all take ‘em.”

Jack looks between Fareeha and Angela.

“Well? Is that true?”

“How am I supposed to know? _Mein Gott_ , I’m not heading up a research division any longer.” Angela taps some more. “It’s not implausible.”

Fareeha shrugs her shoulders, lips pulled up in a pout that he recognizes from his sister. Fareeha’s only met her once, so Gabriel assumes that it’s a Reyes family trait and she must have gotten it from him.

“Told you.”

“Please,” he tells her. “Of course _you_ are gonna say that.”

“Yeah, I guess I am. Because either I’m brainwashed, and then I’d lie, or I’m not, and I’m telling the truth.” She shrugs again. “Same answer. When are you going to admit that you have no idea what you’re doing?”

“It’s a conundrum,” Jack says, scratching his chin. He hasn’t shaved for a few days. His stubble is just about to turn into a beard.

It is indeed. He’d been hoping Sombra’d be able to shed some light on it, but no. Still no luck breaking into the facilities’ records. The new ones, that is. Years of largely mundane operations, supply drops, money laundering, relaying information. Semi-frequently being delivered the occasional prisoner. Some of the kidnapping victims went home, it looks like. Others, people with no strategic value once they’d talked, didn’t. He wonders what they did with the bodies. Incineration would seem the most practical, but he hadn’t seen anything resembling a furnace on his quick tour of the grounds. Transport them away somewhere? Throw them in a ravine? Rocky terrain up in the mountains, difficult to dig graves.

And then, a week ago: Nothing. It’s not that Sombra can’t break into it. She makes her way into anything eventually, in some way or another. A break in for physical access here, an innocent question there… He’s never seen a door she can’t wiggle open. Here, though, it’s not so much that she can’t get the lock open, it’s that she can’t find the damn house. There’s nothing. Even the coffee maker’s logs just stop.

All of which makes Gabriel highly suspicious. Something’s up. Ogundimu, he thinks, because if Ogundimu is suspecting what Gabriel thinks he is suspecting then he would also count on Sombra’s involvement. But the blank logs are a huge red flag. Had he just given up on slipping fakes past her, or are they missing something?

What went on in there for the roughly twenty-four hours of Fareeha’s captivity?

“There’s no conundrum,” Ana says, startling them all. “I was on the roof, I heard you,” she explains, and starts making a cup of tea with calm, precise movements. Her pace is so measured that Gabriel knows she’s in turmoil on the inside. “We just don’t want to take the next logical step.”

Gabriel finds himself making the exact same pout he just observed on Fareeha. He knows what she’s getting at. He does, indeed, not want to.

“You mean Winston.” Jack does not sound enthused. He scrunches his nose in displeasure. “Winston and his new garage-Overwatch.”

“They are _looking_ for me.They could get hurt trying to find me. Let me call them.”

Jack looks at her when he speaks, but his words are for the rest of them.

“We were at our best when Amelie was taken, and we couldn’t stop her. And she wasn’t even a combat operative.” He weighs back in his chair, balancing it on the back legs. For all that he looks relaxed, Gabriel can guess at the power coiled in him. Should she pounce, Jack will be on his feet before she can blink. “I hate to think of the damage you could do among these amateurs, armed with that suit of yours.”

Fareeha’s eyebrow twitches.

“Amateurs?” She plants both hands on the table, leaning across it to get in Jack’s face. “Winston’s the smartest person you’ve ever met, you said so yourself. Reinhardt’s been doing this for longer than any of you.” It’s not true, Gabriel thinks. Reinhardt didn’t join the army until he was twenty. Ana signed on the day after her eighteenth birthday. She turns her head to glare at him, her eyes burning bright in her face. “Jesse was your second for years, Lena can travel through time, Genji is a fucking cyborg ninja -- what more do you _want_?”

A gentle hand appears on her shoulder, soothing. Angela. Gabriel didn’t even hear her move.

“And I am, as I will stay for as long as they’ll have me, Overwatch’s chief medical officer. Are you calling me an amateur, Jack?” Angela’s eyes narrow, and she surveils them both, turning to speak to Ana at the sink. “And Fareeha is a decorated officer, flying a rocket suit, and one of less than ten living humans to have defeated a God program.” Her eyes flick back to Jack, pinning him on her glare. “All of us are at least as qualified as you were when Overwatch was founded.”

“They’re right,” Ana says, walking up with her cup held in both of her hands. “We talked about handing it over, once. This is our chance.” Her hand reaches out to rest on Fareeha’s arm.

Jack tips back down, the front legs of his chair landing with a bang.

“You kids have no idea about the hornet’s nest you’re poking.”

“He’s right,” Gabriel says, crossing his arms. “Overwatch was tainted to its core. My division was being used as a private hit squad to take out political opponents, and it ran so deep I didn’t even see it for years. You can’t just start it up again and expect all those fuckers used to pulling the strings to leave you alone.”

“We’re not. We intend to stay independent.”

“Pffffft. You’re not ‘independent’. You’re vigilantes, just like the rest of us.” Jack rolls his eyes. “Really stupid vigilantes, who’re going to get apprehended by the authorities because your secret hideout is the most obvious place imaginable.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Ana says, putting down her teacup with finality. “Fareeha is right, we can’t stay here indefinitely. And Winston _is_ capable.”

Jack crosses his arms.

“He has no military experience.”

“Then we’d better give him his second back, no?” She looks at Fareeha, mild, worried, proud, a hundred expressions all mixed up together. “Because that’s what you are habībti, isn’t it?”

“It’s not like that.” Fareeha, if anything, looks uncomfortable. “We’re not hierarchical. I have more leadership experience in combat than most of them, so I take charge when appropriate.”

Jack snorts.

“That’s gonna bite you in the ass, kid.” He looks up and notices them all looking, and shrugs a little. “What? I was in command, but do you think either of those two ever did what I told them?” Gabriel is about to pipe in with something, but Jack raises a warning finger before he has time to. Fine. “You’re gonna have a pecking order whether you have a chain of command or not. You need to. And,” he sighs deeply, “you all need to agree what it is, or you’re gonna end up like we did.” His face twists. “And that one’s on me.”

He looks so dejected. Gabriel’s desire to snark fades away in his chest.

“Hey,” he says, reaching for Jack’s hand. “No, it isn’t. I was the one who mutinied. That’s not your fault.”

When Jack looks at him, it’s with a gentleness he didn’t expect.

“I let you get away with disregarding my orders for twenty years, Gabe. It was stupid to assume you’d suddenly fall in line when I needed you to. Ana warned me countless times.”

Gabriel frowns, looking at her. They did have a number of professional disagreements, Ana always annoyed by his dealing under the table, but he never took it for more than grumbling.

She looks between them for a second, before settling on him, glare sharp.

“You never respected Jack’s command.” Her gaze flicks to Jack. “And _you_ never made him. Never even tried.”

Jack and Gabriel look at each other, uncomfortable. Gabriel thinks they’d both prefer to have this discussion out of sight of Fareeha and Angela.

Ana sips her tea, as calm as anything.

It’s Jack who breaks first, shoulders curling in defensively as he rubs the bridge of his nose.

“How could I? Gabe led us through the crisis. He’s better _in_ a crisis than I’ve ever been. I had no right to be in command of him.”

Gabriel blinks. He knew Jack wasn’t entirely comfortable being promoted over him, but he’s never thought of it like that.

“And yet,” Ana says, leaning towards Jack, “the UN put you in charge, because believe it or not, _you_ were better suited.” She throws Gabriel a look over her shoulder. “Yes, he’s a great field commander. Best I’ve ever had. That’s why we always consulted him about _combat operations_ , because that’s where he shines. But if you think for a second that Gabriel could have organized the rebuilding efforts half as well as you did, or gotten the European Commission to stop their infighting, or ever gotten the Ecopoint Initiative off the drawing board, then you’re not half as clever as I’ve been giving you credit for.” She looks at Gabriel, expectant. “Anything you’d like to add?”

He blinks. This discussion has gotten away from him. Ana raises an eyebrow.

“She’s right. Jack--” His eyes flick between Jack and Ana, who is giving him a stern look. “That wasn’t-- I didn’t think you were unqualified.” Ana nods, nearly imperceptibly, her hand circling in a ‘go on’-motion. “That was never the reason.”

Jack just looks at him tiredly.

“What did we say about lying?”

“I’m not lying, dammit!” He rubs his forehead, seeing Jack’s frown deepen as he scratches through the skin. Right. He doesn’t like that. “Fuck, Jack. I didn’t hide things from you because I thought you were incompetent.” Jack raises an eyebrow in tired disbelief. Gabriel finds himself getting oddly angry on his behalf. “I did because I loved you and I wanted you back.” He pauses. Swallows. “That was shitty of me. I’m sorry. I fucked up. I should have talked to you.”

“I didn’t really give you a chance to.”

“Come on, Jack. We both know I could have gotten to you if I’d put my mind to it, if I hadn’t been so caught up in my own problems. You don’t get to blame yourself for that.” He squeezes Jack’s hand, hating the insecurity in his eyes. “Not everything is your fault, Jackie. You were a good strike-commander. Fuck, I can’t imagine keeping that shit together for a year, let alone twenty.”

Jack lowers his head, hiding his face. Angela steps up and lays a hand on his shoulder. Ana smiles sadly and covers his and Jack’s joined hands with hers.

“Yeah. You were great, Jack,” Fareeha says, looking awkward. “Kind of the idol of my entire generation? I thought you knew that.” She straightens her back, and Gabriel grins under his breath as he watches her. She looks like she’s about to give a presentation in class. “Back to the last topic, though: I’m going back to Overwatch. If it makes you feel better about the whole sleeper agent thing, I suggest that you all come along and talk to them.”

That brings them up short.

“They all think we’re dead, though,” Jack says after a while.

Angela chuckles, and Fareeha rolls her eyes.

“No they don’t. You’re hardly subtle, ‘Soldier:76’. You two are a little better at this secret identity thing --”

“Hah!” Jack barks. “Not when you’ve seen Gabe’s roleplaying characters he isn’t.”

“-- but seeing as you’re all holding hands I figure that you worked it out and are an item again.”

Ana tries to pull her hand away as if burnt, but Gabriel follows after it, taking it gently, rubbing his thumb over her palm. Their eyes meet.

Once again Gabriel wishes they weren’t doing this before an audience.

“I thought you couldn’t forgive me,” Ana says in a voice so faint it barely carries across the table.

“Can you forgive everything I’ve done?”

She shakes her head slowly.

“Never.”

“But I still want to be with you. Do you?”

“Yes,” she whispers, her facade breaking as her face contracts in pain, tears slipping down her cheek. He tugs her in, pulling her onto his lap and wrapping her in his arms, holding her close.

Jack pushing his chair back is loud in the sudden silence. His footsteps, slow and heavy, coming closer until he sinks to his knees beside Gabriel’s chair and embraces them both.

“I love you both,” he says, calm and simple.

Gabriel kisses Ana’s hairline, rubbing his nose against the strap holding her eye patch in place.

“Me too.”

Ana nods and clings to him, one hand fisted in his hoodie, the other one fumbling over Jack’s shoulder and eventually tangling in the fabric of his t-shirt.

He sees Fareeha and Angela looking at each other, unsure. Angela shrugs a little and gestures at them.

“Sooo,” Fareeha says, her eyes going to the ceiling as Gabriel takes Ana’s hand, guiding it from Jack’s shirt to his thinning hair, both of them petting it. “As I was saying, I’m not going to make you guys come along, but I’m done keeping your secret, mom, and I’m not keeping Gabriel’s either. Knowing who the Reaper is is way too important for me to keep quiet about.”

“Yeah, about that,” Gabriel says, rubbing his neck. “I did kinda attack Winston not that long ago…”

“Yes, he kicked both your and your squad’s asses.”

“That’s not quite how I would describe it.”

She leans back on the wall, eyebrows raised.

“He caught it on tape, it seemed accurate enough.”

Angela giggles. So does Jack, a low rumbling thing that vibrates against Gabriel’s side.

“Maybe you could tell him that I wasn’t actually trying to kill him?”

Fareeha looks him over.

“You weren’t, were you? We’ve been wondering about that, because every time we faced you, you’d do such _stupid_ things, things you never seemed to do against anyone else. But nobody could figure out why.”

He shrugs, self-conscious.

“That’s me. I’m mysterious.”

“So does everyone agree?” Jack asks, getting to his feet. His hand stays on Gabriel’s shoulder. Ana sits up in his lap, wiping the tear tracks from her face. “We give the kids a chance?”

Ana nods.

“Fine,” Gabriel sighs. “You said McCree’s with them? Am I looking forward to that conversation…” He takes a deep breath, savoring his last few moments of relative freedom. It was only a matter of time. The people you love have a way of getting their claws into you, pulling you into a larger context whether you like it or not. His earbud is in his pocket. He needs to let Sombra know, or she’ll take it as a betrayal. She might fuck him up for that, she sure as hell knows enough to, but that’s not what’s foremost on his mind.

It’s how she will feel about him returning to his family. He doesn’t want her to think it means he’s leaving theirs.

Turns out he doesn’t need to explain the situation to her.

“Gabi, Gabriel, please,” she says, rolling her eyes with such force it somehow translates into her voice. “I’m not a child. You can’t keep me out by unplugging the toaster.”

“Should’a figured. So what’s your take?”

“Well, Akande’s looking even more superior than usual. Nobody’s said anything about the Gibraltar raid. I’ve been replying evasively on your comm channels, but I can’t keep it up forever. Are you --” She pauses for a second, choosing her words. He’s got to hand it to her, she sounds like she doesn’t care at all.

“I’m not joining Overwatch, Sombra,” he cuts in. “We’re in too good a position to give up. And…” He eyes Jack and Ana consideringly. “I might have some friends of mine who’d like to meet you. I think they could be useful. Just keep Talon distracted for a few days, okay?”

“You’ll owe me,” she says, and his wristcomm gives a gentle buzz as it receives a file. “You can start paying it off by stopping by a lab in Geneva and getting that onto their network.”

“Alright. Anything else?”

“Use a rubber, Morrison obviously doesn’t know how to take care of himself. And give him a bath before you bring him here, he’s been living like a fucking raccoon. I have pictures of him sleeping in a dumpster.”

Ana, who’s close enough to hear, chokes back a startled laugh.

“I’ll need copies of those,” Gabriel says, grinning up at a suspicious-looking Jack. “Can you set up a comm line to Gibraltar for us?”

“Yeah, hold on.” There’s silence on the wire for over a minute, before Sombra speaks again. “Fucking God programs. Wait till you hear a beep, I want to disconnect completely before you hail them.”

“‘Kay. I’ll be in touch.”

“Don’t get sappy, old man, just get me on that network.” She disconnects, and he waits, earpiece held close enough to hear.

“So who wants to talk to them? I’m thinking one of you two.” Angela reaches her hand out, and he holds up a finger, making her wait until he hears a sharp beep on the line. “Go.”

“Watchpoint Gibraltar? Gibraltar, this is Mercy.” Her voice softens, from the commanding tone to a more familiar one. “Hi! Athena, I have Fareeha with me, she’s alright.” There’s a pause, Athena speaking on the other side. “Well, she was, but I patched her up. A lot has happened. I’ll put her on, shall I?”

She passes it to Fareeha, who slips it in her ear.

“Hey Athena,” she says, leaning back on the wall and finally relaxing. Back in her element, Gabriel thinks. “I’m okay, thank’s to Angela. And I talked her into coming back with me, so the whole adventure ended up a win for us. Can you get Winston on the line, I have another bomb to drop.” A pause. “No no, it’s a good one. I think. He’ll be,” she says, catching his eyes and winking, “at least two thirds happy about it.” She laughs. “Okay, thanks. You too. Heeey, Winston, how’s it going?”

Gabriel watches her talk, so confident. Friendly and animated in a way she hasn’t been with them. He guesses they deserve that.

He furrows his brow, giving Ana a quick squeeze. A week ago, he had it all worked out. Now the future is hazy and unclear, but maybe, he thinks, it’s brighter.

  
  


### Jack: Class of 2070

There’s a flat meadow big enough to set a transporter down not far from the house, and that’s the coordinates they give. Fareeha still needs crutches for longer walks, but even with them she has no real troubles making it there. They don’t wait long before a dark speck appears in the sky, heading straight for them.

Life hasn’t thought them to be trusting, so aside from Fareeha they’re all geared up.

“You know why I’m doing this,” Ana says, as she locks Fareeha’s hands in a pair of handcuffs. The old, classic design, metal and a short link of chain. Fareeha gives them a dry look.

“But those are ancient!” Angela says, stepping up for a closer look. “Where did you get them?”

Ana bites her lip. Jack tries his best to look innocent, glaring warningly at Gabriel as the smirk grows on his face.

“Please don’t answer that,” Fareeha says, and Angela steps back with a startled ‘oh!’, a blush coloring her cheeks. “I’m happy you have each other, but please, spare me the details.”

“Gotcha, kiddo,” Gabriel says with a grin.

He’s not wearing his mask, having finally listened to the rest of them. Jack knows he’s not keen on letting large groups of people near his face. He bumps their shoulders together, trying to express without words that he’s here, he’ll get between Gabriel and anyone who tries to give him shit. Gabriel bumps back. His huge shoulder puff pokes into Jack’s shoulder.

The plane lands, the winds of the thrusters making Ana’s and Gabriel’s coats twist around in the air like birds taking flight. Then the hatch opens, and all is still for a moment.

Jack is expecting Winston, or maybe Tracer zipping out of the cockpit to say something cocky and indecipherably English. He’s not expecting a solemn-faced Reinhardt to take one heavy step out, look them all over slowly, and turn around without saying anything. He retreats inside the transport, one hand covering his face.

They wait, in uncomfortable silence.

Ana shifts, gesturing to the hatch. “Should we..?” and Jack is just about to agree when Torbjörn stomps down the ramp.

“Unbelievable,” he yells. “We’ve known you were alive for ninety fucking minutes, and you’ve already made him cry.” He glares at them archly, staying high enough up that he can look down his nose at them. “That you, Reyes?”

Gabriel nods. Jack takes his hand in support. Torbjörns features scrunch up in distaste.

“Go back to Talon, you traitorous piece of shit. We ain't paying your bills. Morrison, what the shit, are you such a horndog that nothing that fucker does can put you off?”

Jack shrugs.

“I suppose. Nice to see you, Torb.”

Torbjörn spits in their direction. He’s being unexpectedly friendly. Must have missed them.

“How is Reinhardt, Torbjörn?” Ana says, taking a step closer.

“Well how the fuck do you think?” Torbjörn crosses his arms over his chest, a short, stout wall of muscle blocking their access to his friend. “He followed you into hell for half his life and this is how you repay him? Get Fareeha and Angela on board, you fuckers can walk to Gibraltar.” He sniffs. “Reflect on your sins while you’re at it.”

A shadow moves up behind him in the hatch with a soft jingle.

“We’re not going to Gibraltar,” Jack says. “Is that you, McCree? Come out where we can see you.”

“I’m good here, thanks.” Bright sunlight glints off a metallic arm as he tips his hat to them. “You look like shit, boss.”

“McCree.”

“Reyes.”

The tension holds for a moment, before Gabriel drops his shoulders with a sigh.

“How’ve you been, kid?”

“‘m not your kid.” He’s silent for a second, before he strikes a match, the flame lighting up his face as he lights his cigar. “Been hearin’ some nasty things about ya.”

“ _Outside!_ ” Torbjörn bellows, before Gabriel has a chance to respond. “You take that foul-smelling cancer stick out of this plane this _instant_!”

“Okay okay,” McCree soothes, scampering out the hatch and leaning back on the body of the plane like he just decided to wander out there. He looks well. Scruffy and weathered, but healthy. Confident. “ So. There a reason Fareeha's in chains and you ain't?”

Gabriel gently shakes his hand loose from Jack’s and crosses his arms.

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“Yeah? How is that? ‘Cause the way I see it, you’re the reason I’ve spent six years on the lam.”

“I’m also the reason you didn’t spend the last twenty years in prison.” Gabriel shrugs. “So maybe some gratitude would be in order.”

“You betrayed us.”

“It was a complex situation. You, on the other hand, ran away and betrayed _me_ , so get the fuck off whatever high horse this is.”

“Hmm.” Gabriel and McCree glare at each other, keep glaring until Genji appears in the doorway.

He looks different. White and green instead of black and red. Smoother, brighter, more at ease. Jack can’t see a single storm cloud drifting after him.

He claps McCree on the shoulder.

“Chin up, 'pardner’,” he says, leaping off the ramp and landing with catlike grace. “The company he keeps speaks well of him.” He walks right past them, spreading his arms and somehow pulling off the feat of smiling with his whole body. “Angela. It is good to see you again.”

“It's been too long, Genji. You look well.”

“I am. You will meet the reason for it once we get back to Gibraltar.”

Angela’s face lights up even brighter, but whatever response she might have been about to give is interrupted by the ponderous hiss of the pilot’s hatch sliding open. Out of it steps Oxton, _Tracer_ ,moving with a slow restraint that isn’t like her. Winston is right behind her, straightening his glasses.

“Uhm,” he says, attempting to stand up straight in a way that his anatomy clearly wasn’t designed for. “Sir?” He looks between them, latching onto Gabriel with a narrowing of the eyes. “Mr Morrison, Captain Amari.” Gabriel is pointedly left out, receiving nothing but a suspicious glare. “I’m sorry, this situation is unusual. What do I call you now that you’re not commander anymore?”

Not commander anymore, huh?

“I wasn’t aware I was demoted.”

Winston’s massive brow furrows.

“You did abandon your post for several years.” Yellow eyes scans over Jack’s face, large nostrils twitching. “Now I’m not military, but I believe that's cause for disciplinary action.”

Jack shrugs, staring him down, a hard smirk on his face. He knows exactly how uncomfortable direct eye contact makes Winston, he’s spent years politely avoiding it. It’s disturbingly entertaining to be a dick to him.

“Overwatch ain't military.”

As he expected, Winston folds first, sitting down on his ass.

“Well,” he says, trying for, Jack assumes, lenient, tolerant, _the bigger primate_. His toes gripping each other nervously betrays him. “That’s good. In that case, I’m not a mutineer for not offering you your job back.”

“You don’t have my job, Winston. You have a bunch of hobbyists operating out of a tree house.”

Winston glares, annoyed enough to meet his eyes again, staring back at him until Ana scoffs beside him.

“Leave him alone, Jack, it’s not like you want the job.”

“You don’t?” Tracer asks, suddenly appearing at Winston’s side. “Because we were rehearsing arguments all the way here, Winston was really nervous.” Jack hears Gabriel try and fail to suppress his snort.

Winston swallows.

“That’s not entirely true.”

“They stayed quite focused until after take-off,” an electronic voice chimes in from somewhere on Winston’s person, and the gorilla sighs in defeat. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Commander, Captain. As for Commander Reyes,” it continues, now decidedly less amiable, “I have still not recovered some data that was compromised during your last visit. It was most unpleasant.”

Gabriel shrugs, entirely unapologetic.

Jack holds up a hand before he has a chance to say anything more, because while he’s certain that Winston wouldn’t attack _him,_ he’s just realized that they’ve brought Gabriel along to a place where they’re woefully outnumbered. Neither Angela nor Fareeha would turn on him like this, they were raised better than that, but in hindsight… Jack bites the inside of his cheek. He hadn’t really considered how the rest of his old troupe would react to Gabriel's presence. So far, they haven’t been very friendly.

He tries to discreetly eye Ana’s supply of sleep darts, strapped to her bracer. He doesn’t think that she’s stocked up since leaving Giza. How many of them were cannibalized taking care of their various maladies?

“You realize I won’t let you disappear again.”

Fareeha’s standing a few feet away, flanked by Genji and Angela. They’re both holding her elbows. He’s not sure if it’s to support or restrain her. Maybe both.

“Of course,” Ana says, fumbling in one of her many pockets. She extracts, because when was she ever without, a paper napkin and a stub of pencil, scribbling something on it before handing the napkin over. “Here. I use it for my contracts, but I check it. I’ll think of something more appropriate.” She swallows nervously and takes Fareeha’s hands, handcuffs jingling, Ana’s thumbs rubbing over her daughter’s knuckles. “I want to be in your life again.”

“Then don’t hide from me.” Fareeha lifts her arms and awkwardly loops them around her neck. “I’ll be in touch. We have a lot to talk about. Jack.”

She turns to him and holds her arms up, not hesitating for a second. Humbled, he ducks his head into her embrace. Fareeha holds him there for a second, tugging his ear close to her mouth.

“You look after her.” He tries to pull back enough to answer her. She doesn’t allow it. “I don’t care whose fault it was, or who left first. She’s my mom. If you let anything happen to her I will end you.”

He hugs her back, equal parts cover as affection.

“You know I can’t promise that. She does what she wants.”

“I’m not saying it’s fair. It just is.” She lets him go, and wraps her arms around Gabriel instead. Jack can’t hear what she says to him, but he looks touched, squeezing her tight before letting go.

And then Angela is standing in front of him. He doesn’t like the look on her face. She’s brilliant, top of her field. Uncertain doesn’t suit her.

“Jack,” she says, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “You were… not like a father to me, that’s not fair to the father I had.” She blinks slowly, her eyes going ever so slightly shiny.

Please, he thinks, don’t cry, I can’t take another person I’ve let down crying at me today.

Fortunately, she keeps control of herself, eyes hardening. “I was devastated at your loss. When I learnt that you were still alive, I felt…” Her brow scrunches up prettily, the perfect daughter he never had. “I was glad, of course, but also deeply hurt. I thought better of you. I didn’t think you would do such a thing to us.”

Jack doesn’t know what to say. I’m sorry? I’m sorry hasn’t cut it so far.

He says it anyway. It’s the best he has.

Angela nods once and turns away.

“As Fareeha said. Don’t disappear.”

“We won’t.”

“Good.”

Then she’s striding away, catching up to Fareeha and Genji on the ramp. She raises a hand in farewell, standing there until the door closes.

The wind whips about them as the transport takes off, and then they’re alone, just the three of them and the sunset. Ana leans her head on his shoulder. After a second, Gabriel nudges their shoulders together, taking his hand.

They stand there for a while, watching the sky, the breeze tickling Ana’s hair across his face as their shadows lengthen.

“Well,” Jack says after what feels like an appropriate amount of time. He slings an arm around each of them. “It’s about time for dinner. Who wants pasta?”

“Not me,” Gabriel says. “I want literally anything besides more pasta.”

“I guess you could eat the sauce as a soup?”

“Or that.”

“In that case,” Jack says, turning them both around and beginning to steer them back to the house. “I can offer you an exciting dish of... salt.” Ana laughs as Gabriel makes a face. “With or without vodka, that is entirely up to you.”

“Gee, _thanks_.”

“You’re welcome, darling. Ana, do you want spaghetti or a bowl of salt?”

“Salt, please, it sounds lovely.”

“It’s my specialty.” He squeezes them both, pressing a kiss to Gabriel’s ear. “We’ll make a snack run tomorrow, okay? This is our first night alone, food’s not really my top priority.”

“Oh?” Ana says with a smirk, nudging him with an elbow. “And what did you have in mind?”

“I dunno,” Jack says, deadpan. “Boardgames?”

Gabriel snorts.

“In that case, prepare to have your ass kicked.”

“Oh.” Jack pretends to consider. “Sex, then?”

Gabriel rubs his chin in thought.

“...I might still kick you in the ass.”

“I’ll take the risk. Ana?”

“Oh, I am always eager to see you get kicked.”

“Hilarious.” He pulls her closer, nosing into her hair. She smells like long-forgotten summers, Gabriel’s body wash making her hair coarse and unmanageable whenever she forgot to bring her own things with her. “I’ve missed this. Missed us.”

They’re not what they were, but they’re here. They’re alive, or more than two thirds alive, and they’re together.

It’s something.

It’s everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is done. I am elated and sad at the same time. This has been tremendous fun and I am sad to see it end. I do plan to write more in this universe so if you wish to tag along I suggest you subscribe to the series instead of this fic!
> 
> You have been a marvelous audience and I am so happy to have had you with me. I will cherish your comments always, and cry about how lovely you all are. 
> 
> If you wish to talk to me before I post the next thing, I am on [tumblr](http://liripip.tumblr.com/)! Come say hi to me :3


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